The Religion Called 'CRICKET'

We are a diverse nation and unity is not exactly a reality in India, I believe it is a myth. Not many things unite the whole nation but there are definitely two of them that I can cite, one is terrorism and other one is Cricket. The first thing is a little too serious and too massive to talk and debate about in such a casual way and without much thinking.

Master Blaster

So I shall be writing about the other thing that unites us and it is the Religion Called ‘Cricket’. As all religions do, even this religion has one universal God and then there several regional (not religional) Gods in there…Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has established himself as that one God, no second opinions about that and then there are regional Gods of cricket like Ganguly, Dravid, etc.

The question that looms large is what will happen to this religion when the Gods disappear?? (in this case they shall retire.. :-P)Will cricket be able to retain its viewership in India in the years to come??Because the number of devoted fans they have are quite huge in number and keeping their interests in cricket intact is going to be a tough job… KKR must be thanking their Stars for Ganguly not being picked up by any franchisee or else I wouldn’t have been surprised had the whole of Kolkata cheered for Ganguly against KKR.

DADA

A lot has happened in India concerning the cricket we play in recent years, it all started with a poor outing in 2007 world cup, then emerged the new leader, then the T20 world cup came home… IPL came into the picture and with it raised the concerns of the whole world about changing priorities of the cricketers, is it going to be money or the country??Well Indian players are kind of lucky in this context; they seem to be getting both but with it they have lost their right to complain about too much cricket!! I really feel that you can’t complain when you are being paid Rs.1 crore (for class A players) just as the annual contract fee.. The per match fees stand at Rs. 7 lacs for a test match, Rs. 4 lacs for an ODI and Rs. 2 lacs for an ODI… Calculate the expenses incurred per match and the income required to support it!!Not really sure about how long BCCI will be able to sustain this with the falling viewership, with too much cricket being played, with burnout of the players and retirement of the Gods….One way forward is going the ‘football’ way and having more of the domestic matches or club cricket with less international games because if we see we really have people who are backing their IPL franchises no matter which players play for them; the reason being that they know these players might not be with them 3 years later, so their loyalties belong to the team and not to a particular player.Anyway all we can do is wait and watch how it goes??And how can I miss out on the World Cup that’s coming up, just hoping that India does well.. :-)

Final Reads : 368 : Pts 3/10

Editorial Score : Pts 7/10

Total Pts : 10/20