England's Ashes win delivers 2m to Sky Sports 1

An audience of 1.92 million at the end of the match, between 5.45pm and 6pm,  delivered a 14% share of multichannel viewers.

Full coverage, from 10am to 8pm, gave Sky Sports 1 an average audience of 856,000 (8%).

While impressive for the multichannel broadcaster, it is still small in comparison to the average 4.7m who watched the final afternoon of the 2005 Ashes on Channel 4. At its peak on C4 in 2005, coverage of the match – won by England – delivered 7.4m.

Yesterday’s win also gave a boost to Five, with 2m viewers (9.7%) tuning in to relive the glory between 7pm and 8pm.

The figure was a clear million ahead of what the Sunday night slots usual 970,000 viewers (4.5%), but failed to beat cosy BBC1 programme Countryfile which drew 4.3m (21.3%) in the same hour.

At 9pm, viewers were offered more than just repeats and movies with ITV1’s moving drama Gunrush drawing 3.1m (14.8%) for nearly two hours to 10.50pm.

Over on BBC1 at 9pm, Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones swept away a respectable 5.4m (23.7%) over the 9pm hour, after WI comedy Jam and Jerusalem scored a whisker under 4m (18.6%) from 8pm .

On BBC2, Stephen Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can averaged 2.3m (10.5%) from 8pm to 10.30pm, while C4’s Jack Black comedy School of Rock was seen by 1.9m (8.6%) between 8pm and 10pm and 160,000 (1%) an hour later on C4+1.

Five’s 1979 action adventure movie North Sea Hijack was seen by 1.2m (5.4%) between 8pm and 10pm.