Are you one of the few watching England play international cricket on the telly this summer?

You'll be surely interested to hear just how many have been able to enjoy the exploits of Ian Bell, Alastair Cook and Monty Panesar, in exchange for more than £40 a month and rising.

But BSkyB seem very reluctant to reveal how many have actually subscribed for exclusive viewing of England's matches for this and the next three summers. Yet they were very happy to trumpet their new subscribers' total to the media last week.

Curiously, it's deemed too commercially sensitive to tell the public just what the cricket figures are.

That also seems to be a view shared by the England & Wales Cricket Board, who happily handed over exclusive live coverage in exchange for loads of dosh in late-2004.

As the guardians of our national summer sport, you would have thought they'd be keen to discover how many are watching. Yet it appears curiosity is on hold.

During the recent Lord's Test, the ECB's chief executive David Collier was interviewed on Test Match Special and quizzed about the Sky figures. He remained resolutely on-message, deflecting the key question on three occasions.

At one stage, he replied, 'It's very misleading to take snapshot data' [2014] that's code for 'they're not very good, but you can't expect me to say that'.

The ECB is never slow to tell us how many are attending their successful Twenty20 competition, nor about the increase in county memberships, or how many are actually playing the game now in this summer.

So they should, by the way. They were equally happy to bask in the reports of the millions who watched the Ashes battle last summer. No waffle about 'misleading snapshot data' there.

At Old Trafford a few days ago, I asked the ECB's head spin doctor about the Sky figures. He said he didn't know, that the commercial department probably would and why didn't I ask Sky myself?

He seemed strangely uninterested. Either he was bluffing, determined not to reveal that the figures were poor, or he's not doing his job in finding out. I lean to the former, because that same spin doctor has talked up the Sky deal's merits for over a year now.

My information is that after five Tests this summer, Sky's highest figure is around 300,000 a day and that the average hovers around 200,000.

On the Sunday of the Test at The Oval against Australia, Channel 4's audience peaked at just over eight million and even against Bangladesh earlier last summer, it was over a million a day.

The Test series sponsors, nPower, are particularly interested in Sky's returns. With their contract due for renewal at the end of next summer, nPower are now in negotiations with the ECB. They will be looking to pay less next time around, because sponsors want the biggest television audience possible.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the nation isn't watching England play cricket and the national game runs the risk of being marginalized over the next three years. The ECB's insouciance and obfuscation on this issue are lamentable.