Howzat! Prime to Air Cricket Final Live

In another sign of the new batting order at Sky TV, the paycaster has elected to let its free-to-air channel Prime screen the ICC Cricket World Cup final live on Sunday night.

The match, in which NZ will square off against Australia or England after narrowly beating India, will air from 9.00, pre-empting most of the channel’s previously scheduled line-up, including 10.30 coverage of the Netball World Cup.

Prime has yet to finalise Sunday’s schedule but expect updates at facebook.com/PrimeTV and twitter @Primetv_NZ.

The pre-emption follows several months of Sky bosses cranking up the amount of free-to-air sport they offer on Prime.

For instance, tomorrow night’s schedule will be 100% sport, with ICC highlights at 6.00, The Crowd Goes Wild at 7.00, live Netball World Cup coverage (NZ vs Malawi) at 7.30, RAW at 9.45, Smackdown at 10.45 and Tour de France highlights at 11.45.

But they have yet to level the playing field with Sky Sport by upgrading Prime to HD on the Freeview platform.