Why cricket in India will thrive

By definition, sporting talent lies outside the normal curve – only somebody with extraordinary skill (1 in 8 billion in terms of hand-eye coordination for a Bradman [sigma of population 1908-2005] or flexibility for Korbut) has sporting talent/genius.

If the pyramid of practitioners has a large base, we are likely to have more sporting talent thrown up. Russia has a population of 125 million chessplayers and it possesses an outstanding array of chessplaying talent. The US has a base of 6 million bridgeplayers and it throws up an outstanding array of bridgeplaying talent.

Can we assume that a larger based pyramid will always throw up the best talent and produce the best results? This may not be true. Australia has a far smaller base of cricketers than England/India/Bangladesh. It still identifies more talent and nurtures it better.

I think the administration of the game and the incentives for playing it seriously may be more important than simply having mass popularity, assuming the pyramid has a minimum base -- that is, there is a minimal critical mass of players which is met.

And genius may strike like lightning out of a clear sky.

The Italians had a far smaller base of bridgeplayers than the US but they absolutely dominated the game for a 20-year period because three of those Italians (Belladonna, Forquet, Garozzo) happened to be geniuses. Pakistan and Taiwan made it to the finals of the world bridge championships several times because Pakistan possessed one genius in Zia Mahmood (with a total bridge-playing population of 6 expatriates) and Taiwan possessed a bridge-playing population of 10 people with 4 decent practitioners who invented a killer bidding system (Precision). Squash is another example of random genius – one family (the Khans of Pakistan) dominated the sport for 30 years.

Also, Armenia, Israel and Azerbaidjan, with very small populations and even smaller registered bases of chessplayers, outgun most big chessplaying nations (including India and China which both have more registered and internationally rated chessplayers than Israel+ Armenia+Azerbadijan combined)

Amit's argument also partially revolves around incentives. The concrete financial incentive available to practitioners of a popular sport and the less concrete adulation available to them are key drivers. He seems to be arguing that cricket may lose popularity in terms of entertainment value for socio-economic reasons as India's GDP grows. Hence there will be less money available for cricket and less incentive for cricketers.

I'm not sure once again that this is true. It depends on absolute amounts as well as slice of the overall pie. I am sure that the slice of the pie will decline and cricket will occupy less mindspace, say, a decade down the line. There will be less money in percentage terms. But if Indian GDP grows as almost everyone seems to be projecting, the absolute cash available to the game will increase enough to keep every serious practitioner interested.

Case in point: Men's soccer in the US. It has a tiny viewership in US percentage terms; it has miniscule cash incentives in comparison to basketball, baseball and American football. Yet the US has consistently qualified for the World Cup and given an excellent account of itself in the past decade. I think what has happened here is that, in absolute terms, the incentives are enough.

In a pyramid with a narrower base we probably have a selection bias – only the seriously talented and competitive bother to play. That means a tougher and more exclusive field. We may actually get a counter-intuitive outcome where circa 2020, India has fewer practicing cricketers but it has a far higher number of really good players.