FAR from snoozing on the sofa, cricket's soaring television audience are suddenly more likely to watch from behind the sofa and Rupert Murdoch must be rubbing his hands at the thought of rocketing dish sales.

As Channel 4's audience peaked at 7.7 million for the second successive gripping climax to a Test match it has re-ignited the rumpus over cricket being shown exclusively on Sky for the next four years.

It was Lord MacLaurin who, as chairman of the ECB, managed to get England's home Tests removed from the protected list of sports events which must be shown on terrestrial television. So the Scottish FA Cup final remains one of the "crown jewels" but Ashes Tests don't.

Unless Geoffrey Boycott takes the ECB to the European Court of Human Rights and has Sky's four-year deal revoked, the Great Undished will not be able to watch the Aussies' next visit in 2009.

Will we care by then? No other series in the intervening years, except England's 2006/7 visit to Australia, will hold a candle to this one because the two teams are far ahead of the rest.

Next summer our visitors are Sri Lanka and Pakistan, both of whom have some exciting players but rarely summon the collective will to perform well away from home.

In 2007 we host the West Indies, who remain shadows of their former selves, and India, who can bat like princes but bowl like paupers. As Michael Vaughan's men should go on improving for the next few years, they will have no competition, but the suspicion remains that the chance to project a triumphant England team to as big an audience as possible would help to maintain the current surge in interest.

I have long argued that the obsession with football is culturally degrading. There have to be healthy alternatives and it would be a crying shame if the sudden renewed passion for our leading summer sport fizzled out just as quickly as it flared.

AS Durham have kindly installed a television for us in the new media centre at Riverside, I was able to watch Paula Radcliffe's triumphant entry into the Helsinki stadium last Sunday. In fact, I can reveal that as she crossed the line to win her World Championship marathon gold, play at Riverside was being held up because Durham's Callum Thorp had been struck in the unmentionables and was being attended to by the physio.

Quite what a physio can do in such circumstances I have never quite fathomed, but I'm sure that, like me, he would rather have shared Paula's joy than Callum's pain.

Britain's solitary gold was a huge consolation for Paula after the agony of Athens, but scant return for the Lottery funding which is poured into under-achieving athletes such as Mark Lewis-Francis, the former world 100m junior champion.

We are suddenly capable of winning relay medals after years of dropping the baton, but our sprinters can't perform competitively on their own and the middle distance cupboard is bare.

There is no point in handing Lottery money to these people if they merely use it to exist in a comfort zone and don't stretch themselves to the limits required for success.

Dave Collins, the recently appointed performance director, has a background in psychology, which he must use to identify and nurture those who can combine genuine medal-winning potential with a real will to win. There probably won't be more than a dozen of them, but Collins needs to concentrate his efforts there and tell the rest to shuffle off into the sunset.

If that creates a financial saving then the money can used to improve facilities so that more youngsters might be encouraged to have a go at a variety of track and field events. Who knows where a world champion pole vaulter might be lurking?

IF football's here the rugby season can't be far away and Newcastle Falcons are continuing their build-up on a ten-day trip to Japan, where they were seriously rattled by an earthquake on Tuesday.

There was a quote from their fitness coach Steve Black which said: "I was having a bath at the time but it was terrifying experience when all the waves started in the bathroom."

Black is so off-the-wall that it is unwise to take anything he says too seriously, and why would he be having a bath at lunchtime?

Still, it's because he believes in doing things differently that the players speak so highly of his fitness sessions. He won't want them to peak too soon, so taking on the Japanese champions, the NEC Green Rockets, tomorrow should provide the right sort of gentle loosener, despite all the usual stuff about not taking them lightly.

Meanwhile, Rob Andrew is being his usual diplomatic self by supporting Japan's bid to stage the 2011 World Cup, observing: "The hospitality and facilities are first-class. If rugby is to develop as a global game we need to further embrace countries like Japan."

Whether the thought of going back there would have Jonny Wilkinson quaking in his kicking boots isn't known