THE GOOGLY: Ronnie O’Sullivan... Tyson Fury... knew what was coming... watched the darts, says Bumble

HUW TURBERVILL: Since the Beeb lost the live TV rights to cricket in 1999, the perception has been that this annual awards/sports review show has given our great game a bum deal

There’s Bumble, doing what he does best, speaking for the ’umble cricket fan.

BBC Sports Personality of the Year has long been a source of antipathy/apathy for cricket fans.

Since the Beeb lost the live TV rights to cricket in 1999, the perception has been that this annual awards/sports review show has given our great game a bum deal.

Host Gary Lineker likes his cricket, and the BBC still has the lion’s share of England cricket on the radio, via the beloved TMS, but this has not been enough to prevent cricket usually getting only two or three minutes in a round-up of ‘other sports’.

As Bumble said, we all saw it coming….

It came as no great surprise, alas, that the Greatest Sporting Moment of the year did not go to Alastair Cook’s farewell Test century.

^{Alastair Cook, right, and Jimmy Anderson at the Sports Personality of the Year awards}

Instead England’s historic Commonwealth Games netball gold won it. I didn’t see that. I am sure it was great. It damn well must have been to beat that moment at The Oval. Nobody there that day will ever forget it: a nation realising how much they adored a sportsman as he took leave after 12 years at the top. A packed crowd’s standing ovation, plus an unprecedented encore a minute later. A magnificent atmosphere: hairs standing up on the back of your neck stuff.

At least Tiger Woods’ first tournament victory in five years did not beat Cook (that really would have been an insult), and I guess it was good to see ‘the senior men’s team’s penalty shootout victory over Colombia’ miss out.

I know it was fun while it lasted, but England failed to beat anybody good in last summer’s football World Cup, and I believe people will look back on it as an opportunity for glory missed in decades to come.

Ronnie O'Sullivan ...Tyson Fury ........ knew what was coming ....watched the darts https://t.co/vN4y4j1I1T

— David 'Bumble' Lloyd (@BumbleCricket) December 17, 2018

The important thing to say is that all the awards on Sunday night were part of a ‘people’s vote’, not just the findings of some BBC panel, smarting that the UK’s summer sport, one of this country’s ‘big three’, is on satellite. So what does that say about cricket’s place in the public eye?

Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas was BBC Sports Personality of the Year, continuing this country’s weird fixation with lycra.

We must count our blessings that James Anderson was at least shortlisted.

Cricket’s general absence from the ceremony illustrates just how much needs to be done to rehabilitate the sport, though.

Andrew Flintoff was cricket's last SPOTY winner

It returns to BBC Television from 2020 (until 2024), but will that be enough?

There will be more people watching the England highlights, even if they are on BBC2, than when they were on Five.

If you put the test card on the Beeb people would watch, for some strange reason.

There will also be two live 100-ball games a week, and a couple of men’s T20 internationals. And a women’s T20Is, and eight of their ‘Hundred’ games. But alas no live Test cricket.

Critics of the deal believe it has not gone far enough to redress the terrestrial/satellite balance – a return to the 1999–2005 C4/Sky arrangement, perhaps.

A source close to Cook lamented to me how sad it was that one of his Test innings had never been seen on terrestrial. If his final Test century – that amazing moment when overthrows unexpectedly swept him to three figures – had been seen live on the Beeb, or even Channel 4, would it had scooped him the top prize?

It also shows what a big job the ECB have in the next five years or so.

SPOTY winner Geraint Thomas

All eyes will be on their baby, The Hundred.

What will be the parameters of success?

The eight venues will need to be full (certainly outselling or at least matching Blast games in those grounds).

A new type of audience will not only be expected to attend, but keep attending…

The television audiences will need to be healthy.

It will need to make money.

New director of England cricket Ashley Giles signalled himself out to be a fan of something new early on, and he and Tom Harrison, the ECB chief executive, have a big task on their hands winning over the sceptics after its rocky introduction.

Alas, it could be a long time before another cricketer joins Jim Laker (1956), David Steele (1975), Sir Ian Botham (1981) and Andrew Flintoff (2005, the last time Test cricket was live on terrestrial) as sports personality of the year.