The England and Wales Cricket Board has been handed a boost to its campaign to block the return of the Ashes to the "crown jewels" list of events protected for free-to-air TV after the Tories said they would not back the move if they won power.Hugh Robertson, the shadow sports minister, said it would be a "brave if not very foolish" move at a time when other revenue streams for sport were coming under pressure.
Last year an independent review commissioned by the government recommended that the list of events reserved for live broadcast on free-to-air TV should be expanded to include the Ashes, the whole of Wimbledon, the rugby union World Cup and international football qualifiers involving the home nations.
Sports governing bodies, led by the ECB, attacked the plans. The ECB chairman, Giles Clarke, said the "disastrous" proposals would be ruinous to investment at international, county and grassroots levels.
The proposals, put forward from a panel headed by the former Football Association executive director David Davies, are out to official consultation but Robertson, speaking at a debate with the sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, and the Liberal Democrat sports spokesman, Don Foster, said he would not back any move to list the Ashes.
"When the review was launched the calculation was made that there were an awful lot of votes in returning cricket to free-to-air," he said.
"Now people are just waking up to the fact that 80% of the ECB's income comes from broadcast income and if you take that away you are going to decimate quite a lot of investment that has gone in to women's cricket and the grassroots.
