Cricket today

Ah, I'm improving! It's now less than a month since I last blogged. Anyhow, I figured I'd write on the state of one of my favourite sports, cricket.

First of all, a brief history. Cricket was this game invented in England which very effectively provided 5 days of pretty enjoyable timepass, the games being pretty exciting in the old days. But, in the 50's and 60's, cricket captains figured a boring draw was better than an exciting defeat, and this led to reduced attendances at cricket grounds. So, they introduced one-day cricket. This proved relatively successful. Then came Kerry Packer's "circus". Essentially most of the innovations that we see today such as day-night games, coloured clothing etc. can be traced to World Series cricket. Now, cricket, especially the one-day variety, is very popular in South Asia, but less so elsewhere.

Test cricket is considerably less popular than one-day cricket. This is despite the fact that tests, in my opinion, are my opinion are more exciting than one-dayers, which have fallen into a more or less set pattern with few exceptions. The pattern is something like, biff-bang-pow in the first 15 overs, followed by 20 overs of consolidation, and then 15 overs of more biff-bang-pow.

Plus, the wickets have less for the bowlers than previously, mostly to encourage big shots, that many feel crowds come to watch. Unfortunately, this has led to matches where one team scores 300 plus, and the other team matches it with ease.

One-day cricket has also led to the demise of the technically-correct batsmen like Rahul Dravid. In fact, he's the only batsman who can anchor an innings in the Indian team. So India is almost always in trouble when he gets out.


Fortunately, the recent Ashes series has shown that people are interested in test cricket which is result-oriented, and if the pitches have something in them for the bowlers. Let's hope this prods the powers-that-be into improving the standard of cricket.