Sky TV boss decrees Cricket World Cup final will be free-to-air

Black Caps captain Kane Williamson takes a catch to dismiss India's Hardik Pandya of India during last night's resumed ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 semi-final. Photo / Getty.

New Sky TV boss Martin Stewart took to Twitter this morning to declare the ICC Cricket World Cup final will be free-to-air on Prime "so the whole country can join in."

The pay TV provider said before the World Cup that it would only show the Black Caps two warm-up games plus NZ's round-robin against Bangladesh free-to-air on Prime, with other coverage restricted to Sky Sport and Fanpass subscribers.

But a spokeswoman revealed today that it was always a possibility to open the gates.

Congrats to the @BLACKCAPS on a superb win! We’re looking forward to the Final on Sunday @skysport - and will be showing it on Prime so the whole country can join in 🏏

— Martin Stewart (@MartinStewartNZ) July 10, 2019

"Putting the final on Prime - if New Zealand was in it - was always up our sleeve, but we didn't want to jinx it until we knew we were in the final," she said.

The coverage on Prime will be live.

Radio Sport will have live commentary and on iHeartRadio. The NZ Herald, through nzherald.co.nz, will have live-blog coverage and indepth analysis, and will also host the Radio Sport commentary through the night.

Sky TV came under fire earlier this week from Spark Sport Jeff Latch - who said his company wanted to go after A-list cricket rights and other top codes.

Latch claimed many sports had sold broadcast rights to Sky then suffered declining audiences and participation.

"They've taken the big cheques - pretty much all of them now," he said.

"And they're sitting behind a pay window with Sky but they've seen some pretty distressing things happen to their sport over the past 15 years as a consequence of that."

Black Caps captain Kane Williamson takes a catch to dismiss India's Hardik Pandya of India during last night's resumed ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 semi-final. Photo / Getty.

Latch promised Spark would offer more content free-to-air if it did bag more top sports rights.

He said while Sky had Prime as a vehicle for free content, the amount of sports content available on the channel had wilted away.

New Zealand's 18-run semifinal victory against India was "an historic act of giant-killing" and "one of the finest one-day internationals ever" according to international media.

The Black Caps will face either Australia or England in the final.

The match is set to start 9.30pm Sunday NZT.