James McKeown
Commercialization of Cricket
November 18th 2006 16:44
Commercialization of Cricket
As an avid follower of cricket anywhere in the world, I was keenly following the Champions Trophy that took place in India recently.
Champions Trophy or the Mini World Cup involves all the 11 ICC members. Now for any ODI tournament involving Australia..... I would pick Australia as as the favourites without a second thought. Thats just a sign of the supreme standard of excellence they have acheived.
But even then, taking that excellent record into consideration, Australia was not the main favourite in my book.
Reasons??
Australia had never won the Champions Trophy. They always started as favourites, yet somewhere something would go wrong and they would be knocked out. They were knocked twice by India, once by Sri Lanka and once by England which was last year. Jinx? Maybe...
Another factor to be considered was the country where the Champions Trophy was being played - India.. Although Australia have dominated world cricket over the last few years...there record in the subcontinent hasnt been the greatest.
Sri Lanka are quite invincible when it comes to the subcontinent. Infact among the other subcontinent teams, Sri Lanka probably make the best use of the conditions.
Yes..my favourites were Sri Lanka although Sri Lanka had to qualify for the Champions Trophy..
Now the reason 3 of the 5 Champions Trophy have been played in the subcontinent is obviously the money. Cricket is a religion in this part of the world...cricketing heroes are gods, and everyone had sky high expectations from all the teams.
Bangladesh, sadly were never in the contention...Pakistan reminded us all that controversy and off field incidents are still more important than cricket....The last 3 years in Pakistan cricket have probably been the most unusual..Rarely was there anything written about the team apart from their cricket. But all that was too good to last so long. The Oval test fiasco, the captain being banned, the new captain resigning, the Chairmain resiging, the new captain being reinstated, and lastly..the final nail in the coffin, their premiere bowlers being called back for doping and later banned. No one had given them a chance.
India had recently suffered at the hands of West Indies and Australia in Malaysia and with the kind of poor strategies implemented, India wasnt in great shape either.
Sri Lanka started their tournament on the right note, qualifying with ease.
Now lets get to the main tournament....
Anyone with an iota of knowledge about cricket knows about the placid tracks that are produced here, and the high scoring games that are played. 300 is NOT a winning total.
For someone like me who belongs to the old school of thought and prefers technique and elegance over flashes and hits, I do not enjoy cricket in the subcontinent.
I was expecting run feasts in every match.
What I saw was totally different.
The pitches were bouncy, had grass, moisture in the morning, the ball was swinging, the ball was rising.
I do not know whether this was an intentional decision by the pitch curators or not.
The result???
Hardly a score over 250..Teams struggling to get to 200..
Guess who suffered the most?? India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
One look the batting line up of these teams and one would think they have the best batsmen. But this is where statistics deceives a human brain. A batting average around 40 and a strike rate over 90 is really not a difficult task for batsmen these days considering the batting paradises they bat on.
And this is how class can be distinguished. When I criticized batsmen like Dhoni, Sehwag, Shoaib Mallik Afridi, Gunawardena for having poor technique, I was quickly asked to have a look at their record and their averages and their consistency.
The likes of Younis Khan, Yousuf, Yuvraj, Dilshan, Jayasuriya have scored consistenly in international cricket.
Yet when there is just a little bit in it for the bowlers....they fail miserably. And thats exacly what had happened to them in the Champions Trophy. They simply had no answer to the quality bowling produced by the likes of Kyle Mills, Shane Bond, G McGrath, Ntini and Lee.
These are genuine fast bowlers and in conditions like these..they can topple any batting line especially the flat footed batsmen of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Pakistan were humiliated at Mohali. Their batting would make one wonder whether the batsmen were really international players or school players. They simply had no answer to the bounce and pace of Ntini. This is not the first time the Pakistani batsmen have humiliated themselves against fast bowlers on bouncy wickets. One needs to turn a few pages of history and will find how they surrendered shamelessly against Gillespie and McGrath at Perth in 2004 and how they failed to stand at Old Trafford against Harmisson earlier this year.
India...although not as bad as their neighbours.....but have struggled nonetheless against quality fast bowling. One of the reasons Sri Lanka had to qualify was their poor record overseas in the recent past, except for a 5-0 whitewash of England in England but then again...England was never a great ODI side ..
The hopes of millions of people were pinned on these 3 teams and how badly they disappointed their fans.
But are the batsmen alone responsble??? The respective cricket boards and ICC are more responsible than the batsmen themselves. Cricket is a business for these people...something that is played to earn money...they do not understand class or elegance, they do not understand the beauty of a cover drive, they do not understand the excitement of a bouncer, they do not undersstand the thrill of a yorker, nor do they understand the delight of watching a straight drive. What they DO understand is the turnout of crowd is directly proportional to the number of fours and sixes hit and the amount of runs scored and the number of centuries or half centuries scored.
The capitalists that they are..they quickly figured out how to create a situation that would ensure high crowd turnouts - make it easy for the batsmen, hard for the bowlers in other world, prepre dead, placid wickets with no support for bowlers and all the support for batsmen.
So a batsman like Sehwag or Shoaib Mallik can these days score centuries with the utmost of ease.
The subcontinent teams have been performing quite poorly overall recently.. Their performances overseas have been embarrassing...Pakistan always had a better record abroad than their Indian and Sri Lankan counterparts..but that was during the times of the great Imran Khan....there is a vast difference of that team and this team..while that team played to win..this team plays to avoid defeat. This is the kind of approach of all the 4 subcontinent teams and as a result they are lions at home but sheep abroad..and in this Champions Trophy...they were sheep even at home...
I am extremely happy that these 3 teams got kicked out in the first half...they totally deserved to...Cricket is a game of high standards and it has no place for losers... u cant play fast bowling..leave cricket...these days batsmen have the audacity of giving excuses like "the ball bounced, the ball swung, there was grass on the pitch" after getting out. Preposterous!!! The likes of Viv Richards, David Gower, Ian Chappell must be extremely disappointed to see such a sorry state of the modern batsman...
Commercialisation of cricket has badly badly badly effected cricket.. and unless the authorities involved take appropriate measures...cricket will continue to suffer.
As an avid follower of cricket anywhere in the world, I was keenly following the Champions Trophy that took place in India recently.
Champions Trophy or the Mini World Cup involves all the 11 ICC members. Now for any ODI tournament involving Australia..... I would pick Australia as as the favourites without a second thought. Thats just a sign of the supreme standard of excellence they have acheived.
But even then, taking that excellent record into consideration, Australia was not the main favourite in my book.
Reasons??
Australia had never won the Champions Trophy. They always started as favourites, yet somewhere something would go wrong and they would be knocked out. They were knocked twice by India, once by Sri Lanka and once by England which was last year. Jinx? Maybe...
Another factor to be considered was the country where the Champions Trophy was being played - India.. Although Australia have dominated world cricket over the last few years...there record in the subcontinent hasnt been the greatest.
Sri Lanka are quite invincible when it comes to the subcontinent. Infact among the other subcontinent teams, Sri Lanka probably make the best use of the conditions.
Yes..my favourites were Sri Lanka although Sri Lanka had to qualify for the Champions Trophy..
Now the reason 3 of the 5 Champions Trophy have been played in the subcontinent is obviously the money. Cricket is a religion in this part of the world...cricketing heroes are gods, and everyone had sky high expectations from all the teams.
Bangladesh, sadly were never in the contention...Pakistan reminded us all that controversy and off field incidents are still more important than cricket....The last 3 years in Pakistan cricket have probably been the most unusual..Rarely was there anything written about the team apart from their cricket. But all that was too good to last so long. The Oval test fiasco, the captain being banned, the new captain resigning, the Chairmain resiging, the new captain being reinstated, and lastly..the final nail in the coffin, their premiere bowlers being called back for doping and later banned. No one had given them a chance.
India had recently suffered at the hands of West Indies and Australia in Malaysia and with the kind of poor strategies implemented, India wasnt in great shape either.
Sri Lanka started their tournament on the right note, qualifying with ease.
Now lets get to the main tournament....
Anyone with an iota of knowledge about cricket knows about the placid tracks that are produced here, and the high scoring games that are played. 300 is NOT a winning total.
For someone like me who belongs to the old school of thought and prefers technique and elegance over flashes and hits, I do not enjoy cricket in the subcontinent.
I was expecting run feasts in every match.
What I saw was totally different.
The pitches were bouncy, had grass, moisture in the morning, the ball was swinging, the ball was rising.
I do not know whether this was an intentional decision by the pitch curators or not.
The result???
Hardly a score over 250..Teams struggling to get to 200..
Guess who suffered the most?? India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
One look the batting line up of these teams and one would think they have the best batsmen. But this is where statistics deceives a human brain. A batting average around 40 and a strike rate over 90 is really not a difficult task for batsmen these days considering the batting paradises they bat on.
And this is how class can be distinguished. When I criticized batsmen like Dhoni, Sehwag, Shoaib Mallik Afridi, Gunawardena for having poor technique, I was quickly asked to have a look at their record and their averages and their consistency.
The likes of Younis Khan, Yousuf, Yuvraj, Dilshan, Jayasuriya have scored consistenly in international cricket.
Yet when there is just a little bit in it for the bowlers....they fail miserably. And thats exacly what had happened to them in the Champions Trophy. They simply had no answer to the quality bowling produced by the likes of Kyle Mills, Shane Bond, G McGrath, Ntini and Lee.
These are genuine fast bowlers and in conditions like these..they can topple any batting line especially the flat footed batsmen of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Pakistan were humiliated at Mohali. Their batting would make one wonder whether the batsmen were really international players or school players. They simply had no answer to the bounce and pace of Ntini. This is not the first time the Pakistani batsmen have humiliated themselves against fast bowlers on bouncy wickets. One needs to turn a few pages of history and will find how they surrendered shamelessly against Gillespie and McGrath at Perth in 2004 and how they failed to stand at Old Trafford against Harmisson earlier this year.
India...although not as bad as their neighbours.....but have struggled nonetheless against quality fast bowling. One of the reasons Sri Lanka had to qualify was their poor record overseas in the recent past, except for a 5-0 whitewash of England in England but then again...England was never a great ODI side ..
The hopes of millions of people were pinned on these 3 teams and how badly they disappointed their fans.
But are the batsmen alone responsble??? The respective cricket boards and ICC are more responsible than the batsmen themselves. Cricket is a business for these people...something that is played to earn money...they do not understand class or elegance, they do not understand the beauty of a cover drive, they do not understand the excitement of a bouncer, they do not undersstand the thrill of a yorker, nor do they understand the delight of watching a straight drive. What they DO understand is the turnout of crowd is directly proportional to the number of fours and sixes hit and the amount of runs scored and the number of centuries or half centuries scored.
The capitalists that they are..they quickly figured out how to create a situation that would ensure high crowd turnouts - make it easy for the batsmen, hard for the bowlers in other world, prepre dead, placid wickets with no support for bowlers and all the support for batsmen.
So a batsman like Sehwag or Shoaib Mallik can these days score centuries with the utmost of ease.
The subcontinent teams have been performing quite poorly overall recently.. Their performances overseas have been embarrassing...Pakistan always had a better record abroad than their Indian and Sri Lankan counterparts..but that was during the times of the great Imran Khan....there is a vast difference of that team and this team..while that team played to win..this team plays to avoid defeat. This is the kind of approach of all the 4 subcontinent teams and as a result they are lions at home but sheep abroad..and in this Champions Trophy...they were sheep even at home...
I am extremely happy that these 3 teams got kicked out in the first half...they totally deserved to...Cricket is a game of high standards and it has no place for losers... u cant play fast bowling..leave cricket...these days batsmen have the audacity of giving excuses like "the ball bounced, the ball swung, there was grass on the pitch" after getting out. Preposterous!!! The likes of Viv Richards, David Gower, Ian Chappell must be extremely disappointed to see such a sorry state of the modern batsman...
Commercialisation of cricket has badly badly badly effected cricket.. and unless the authorities involved take appropriate measures...cricket will continue to suffer.
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