One day I was chatting with my friends and someone pointed out that we (India) stand nowhere in soccer. Someone else made a point that cricket is not as famous as soccer, for e.g. there are around 200 countries having soccer teams but only around 20 countries playing cricket. Someone also said that cricket was once included in Asian games but again dropped after that. What can be the reasons of cricket not making it to the masses?
I will not be presenting any facts in this blog to support the reasons I have thought of. So before you comment that the blog is not factually supported , I want to tell you that I do not (generally can not) remember the important historical events/facts that will help the cause called ‘cricket’.
Well I know cricket was invented in England (I hope I am correct here). The other big nations playing cricket is India, Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand Bangladesh etc. All these nations were once the colonies of British Empire, so you can sense the origin of this game in these countries. But then why it did not spread like soccer?
I can think of the reason as the game time rather ‘play time’. It takes a complete day to end a single match of cricket as compared to soccer that takes max 2 hours. We know it was only the test match format with which cricket came into existence. Over the period of years people saw ODI coming into play. The ODIs also started with 60 over per innings, gradually it decreased to 50. Now we are seeing the Twenty20 format reducing the complete play time to 3 hours. So the format of the game is gradually shifting towards what people want rather what people can afford. ‘Afford’ here I mean, not in terms of money but in terms of time. Do we have enough of time to watch a game of cricket a complete day, probably we (the cricket playing nations) have but can we think that people in a country (which do not play cricket) will push for a game that takes a complete day to end. I think no!.
The point I am trying to make here is Twenty20 is here to stay and as it stays it will make the cricket a new fever not only in the cricket playing nations but also in other countries as well in the time to come. I guess this year Asian games have already included this format in their games list. Let us see how long this 20-20 fever takes to become a full endemic disease.
