Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

With international and major association cricket in full swing, it feels like the clock has been wound back forty years to the 1980s, with free to air cricket on our television screens again.

The last couple of seasons have been hell for cricket couch potatoes - since Spark Sport and New Zealand Cricket colluded to lock the Black Caps and White Ferns away on a streaming service that many found difficult and expensive to access.

You could almost hear the cheers of support, when Spark Sport pulled the plug, and NZ Cricket announced that cricket coverage would return to free to air television coverage this season.

Kerry Packer and Channel 9 changed the game forever, when they brought the cricket establishment, kicking and screaming into the professional era four decades ago.

Packers World Series Cricket in the late 1970s introduced night cricket, coloured uniforms, wall to wall television coverage and anchored one-day cricket as the (then) cornerstone.

World Series Cricket even stopped off at the Tauranga Domain in November 1978, when a WSC Australian XI squared off with a WSC World XI, with many of the best players in the world on show.

When the cricket establishment ran up the white flag of defeat to Packers challenge - so began an ODI extravaganza in Australia each summer.

The ODI tri-series would traverse Australia, with the home nation taking on the Windies, England, India, Pakistan and later Sri Lanka and South Africa and our own Black Caps, in a frenzy of cricket action.

Well before the days of digital television, the Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand television arm, would cover all the ODI action from over the ditch for all to see, without cost.

Who can forget Lance Cairns putting the higher levels of the Melbourne Cricket Ground under attack in 1983, with six gigantic 6s, when the rest of the New Zealand batsmen had capitulated. Such was the ferocity of Cairns attack, that he blasted a 21 ball half-century in front of a MCG full house of seventy thousand cricket fans.

The lowest moment in New Zealand Cricket history will remain forever courtesy of the BCNZ coverage. Australian Captain Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl an under-arm delivery with the last ball of the match against New Zealand, in order to win at all costs.

The current TVNZ free to air coverage is streets ahead of the 1980s coverage. Today we have the luxury of the TV big screen at home and streaming coverage on multiple devices on the go.

I enjoy the wall-to-wall coverage of the Dream 11 Super Smash with a double header every day throughout most of January. The best part is yet to come with the return of South Africa in a two test series.

Some will question if Sky Television still has a role to play that will benefit New Zealand Cricket fans. My answer is YES. While TVNZ brings us free coverage of the game in our country, Sky showcases the world game with such gems as the ashes series and today's big three of Australia, India and India.

One could ask why New Zealand Rugby doesn’t embrace free to air television – which is a big question for another day.