Cricket as a sport is more than a 100 years old!

However, in the past two decades the gentlemen’s game has shifted its centre of attraction from England and Australia to India. Rightly so, for it finds its biggest audience group in Asia, especially in a billion-plus population of our nation!

As the game has grown by leaps and bounds in past two decades as far as its financials are concerned, so have the controversies surrounding it. Never before in the history of the game has it been maligned so badly, not only in India, but across the world.

The long format of the game, the tests, is dying a slow death anyways and all possible plans to revive it, including the world cup of the tests, lie in a trash! Then comes the one-dayers and again money is doing the big talk here. Instead of involving more and more nations into active competition, International Cricket Council (ICC) is restricting the big tournaments only between the eight major cricket playing nations so that a regular stream of revenue is maintained. Their logic is that a match between a big team and minnows doesn’t get enough eyeballs so there is no point in planning a series! How lame is that idea? If a minor team is not given opportunities, how is it going to grow and learn?

If that is not enough, IPL in India is generating enough amount of news for all the match-fixing and scandals associated with it. Add to it Mr. Lalit Modi’s latest revelation of creating an alternative cricket authority of the world that’ll align itself with the Olympic movement and will only have Tests and T20s associated with it!

So multiple leagues, limited cricket playing nations, host of controversies and everyone eying the same revenue stream! It is like everyone is out there to kill the goose that lay golden eggs!

No doubt cricket is a rich sport even if it is played in just a few countries, but if it is exploited like this, how long will the sport retain its charm? The fans are already getting disillusioned by all the scandals and all the politics surrounding it. That is one reason why other sports like Football, Hockey, Kabaddi etc. are gaining importance and fan base in India! It is good for sports to have fans that love all kinds of games, but if they are losing interest in one sport due to wrongdoings of a few, then it is a sad state of affairs!

It is high time that all the different voices go silent; there should only be one voice, one uniform view about the development of sport and all the parties involved be it the administration, players or fans, work only towards preserving and nurturing the sport that has been entertaining us for a century now!

The post Does Cricket Has A Future Or Is It Dying A Slow Death Due To All The Ongoing Controversies? appeared first on Youngisthan.in.

There is a famous saying these days which says that if you sincerely wish for something, the whole Universe conspires to give it to you. It seems the collective wishes and prayers of a host of sportspersons across all kinds of sports except cricket are being answered right now!

The writing is on the wall!

Cricket is dying, day by day, week after week, year after year and the slide is quite phenomenal!

However, the silver lining is it is dying at the cost of other sports which are taking the space which was single-handedly grabbed by an entertainment giant called Cricket.

But first, let’s share with you some figures about cricket’s slow and steady decline.

Hard Facts!!

Firstly, cricket’s reach in India has declined from 77% in 2010 to 70% in 2014.

If one compares the income distributed by BCCI to players, it has declined from Rs. 49crores in 2012-13 to just Rs. 11 crores in 2013-14! Now that is a huge drop!

So what is happening?

Nothing much, except the fact that fatigue is setting in. In this age of really fast life, people are not finding enough time to sit through an 8-9 hour long One-day match without the crowd-pulling power of some outstanding players. It is a fact that the era which took cricket to its stupendous heights was due to some heavyweights of Indian cricket comprising of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. One by one everyone retired, but the final blow was Sachin’s retirement. A whole generation who got stuck to their TV sets due to maestro’s batting suddenly felt a void and couldn’t relate to his absence. No player has been able to fill the big shoes even though Virat Kohli does look promising. In short, the attraction isn’t that huge now that one gets the tendency to leave everything to just watch a match! Moreover, there are other means of entertainment for quick gratification instead of spending five days or even 8hours on a cricket match when it is not inspiring enough!

Who is winning?

The obvious winners are other sports leagues launched in recent years, including comprising of sports like football, hockey, kabaddi, badminton and tennis. These sports take almost as much time as a T-20 takes so it easily squeezes in the busy schedules. The working population is going for variety and the youth isn’t connecting to cricket the way their elders did almost 20years ago. In a way it is good because the money available to promote sports gets distributed for the development of other neglected sports and sportspersons. Instead of only one sports body getting richer and richer, everyone gets a pie of the action and benefits from it.

The Way Forward..

The only question to be answered is whether BCCI and ICC are in tune with changing realities or living in their cocoon? Globally, only 14 countries play cricket and the sports bodies have plans to cut short the number of teams playing in the next World Cup to only 10. In a scenario when cricket is losing its sheen in the biggest market, India, and no major development is happening to promote the sport in other countries, what is the future of cricket not only in India, but world over?

Till they ponder over it, let’s enjoy our IPL games!

At least they are not going anywhere, anytime soon!

The post Cricket Is Dying In India And So Are The Generated Revenues! appeared first on Youngisthan.in.