Why Sky's cricket coverage knocks rivals for six Over the weekend we were treated to two play-off finals, an England international, a Test match, French Open tennis, Magic Weekend rugby league, the Monaco Grand Prix, a Premiership final, the fascinating climax to the Giro d'Italia. That's not even all of it. I was forced to abridge, for fear of losing your attention to the smell of charred meat wafting from next door's garden. This, simply put, is too much sport. Or, to be more specific, too much sport at once. Not even the growth of personal video recorders has managed to square the maddening circle of how to follow multiple sporting events. But if just one, then let it be the cricket. Sky's cricket coverage made the headlines last week as a result of an unseemly Twitter comment by Kevin Pietersen about commentator Nick Knight. Can somebody please tell me how Knight has worked his way into the commentary box for Tests? Ridiculous," Pietersen wrote, a remark for which he was punished by being forced to sit through an entire Knight commentary stint. Though Knight is not without flaws as a broadcaster - his awkwardness on camera, an occasional inability to communicate his thoughts clearly, the fact that his middle name is Verity - he does at least watch enough cricket to form a reasonably informed judgment. It is surely a measure of Sky's quality that even the least able of their stable can be accused of nothing more than a little mild linguistic ham-fistedness. Indeed, I would venture that taken as a whole, Sky's coverage of Test cricket is not just the best around, but the finest coverage of any sport that there has ever been. It is an audacious statement, to be sure, and there is no shortage of rivals to the accolade. ITV's 1970 World Cup panel of Jimmy Hill, Malcolm Allison and Bob McNab deserves an honourable mention, while Formula One has never given a better treatment than when Murray Walker and James Hunt were at their 1980s peak. But in terms of technology, information, analysis and judgment, Sky's current output is without peer. The skill of Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd and Michael Holding (we shall politely gloss over the opinionated but frequently misguided Sir Ian Botham) is manifest, but it is the production team behind them that brings their labour to fruition. Some of the Hawk-Eye analysis on display is stunning in its clarity and insight. Cricket aficionados like to drown in numbers, but on Sky statistics are deployed sparingly and always with a purpose. Ian Ward's close-of-play interviews are swiftly becoming required viewing for their polite insistence that players actually answer the question being put to them. Even the most knowledgeable fan emerges from a day in front of Sky's cricket coverage having learned something. I could go on and on about Lloyd's gleeful digressions into bawdy Lancastrian cant, Holding's pinpoint tirades on shoddy West Indian cricket administrators, the unerring usefulness of the information bar at the bottom of the screen. But you're busy people, with rays to catch and knees to singe.