A diet of irrelevant matches and meaningless series
Too much cricket is making it hard to tell the difference between one game and the next, and ruining the appeal of even the sport's biggest events, write Ravi Krishnan and Anushree Chandran in Mint .
Tariq Engineer
25-Feb-2013
Too much cricket is making it hard to tell the difference between one game and the next, and ruining the appeal of even the sport's biggest events, write Ravi Krishnan and Anushree Chandran in Mint.
The World Cup has 49 matches spread over 43 days. That’s 8 hours of cricket daily over a month—a tad less than the 51 matches played over 47 days in the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies. No sooner does it end, that the IPL begins. With 10 teams playing 74 matches over 51 days, that’s another 222 hours of cricket.
One place where you probably wouldn’t expect to find a game of cricket is Croatia, but, as Neha Puntambekar describes in vivid detail in the same paper, the Croats play cricket too.
Take cricket, for example. It too has had to adapt to the local rhythm. So the ground sits between twin vineyards and a World War II airstrip, old wine barrels double up as scoreboards, the game starts only after the day’s fifth cup of coffee, and a six means yet another ball lost in the neighbour’s vineyard. Yes, things are different, but that’s half the fun.
I’m here with my husband Vivek, a part of the Zagreb XI playing the local team for top honours in the Croatian league. Since everyone chips into the team effort, I am the official scorer. It’s not a bad job on a hot day. I sit under a tree with my score sheets and a cool drink, hoping for a hint of valley breeze.
Tariq Engineer is a former senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo