Was that a Great Advertisement?

Darren Sammy portrayed himself to be most relived man in world today after his team avoided a defeat at the hands of Indians in the third test which was a dead rubber. None would have expected such a finish on the final day after what was dished out on the first four, but that is test cricket as experts would say -where every session is important. The captain of the team which had scored close to 600 runs and had a healthy lead of more than 100 during his post-match presentation said this was great advertisement for game of cricket and which was agreed by many people who would have watched he turn of events through this test.

Great advertisement- was it? No! I would never call this match a great advertisement to the game, instead I would like to point out that the West Indian team is not a worthy opponent against whom we could expect thrilling matches, they despite having first innings lead twice in this series have let their opponent crawl back and secure the series 2-0.Media and cricket board sponsored commentators through their repeated expert view can create a pseudo feeling of greatness about these kinds of matches and sell the game.

Analyzing the history of any competitive sports would point to us that no nation can dominate any popular competitive sport for lengthy time, the decline of one nation has seen the rise of set of other nations which would have enabled that sport to move forward in terms of competitiveness which in turn would increase the passion among fans and thus increasing the popularity. Unfortunately for cricket no new nations have taken the mantle from leaders like West Indies and Australia in moving the game forward. Had countries like Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Netherland, Kenya, and Scotland put a strong team which they have failed to do, we wouldn’t have seen a year like this where teams like India and England had to play back to back series against each other. Money generated today have neither being used properly in expanding the game in newer countries nor have it been used to expand the infrastructure of existing nations.

Fatigue and boredom has set amongst the fans watching meaningless series being played by the same set of nations. Excitement would be temporary with small tweaks of changes like introduction of power play in one day games or bowling with different set of balls from two ends, day and night test and test championship which has been proposed would ignite the interest amongst fans for quite a while but cannot sustain the interest unless we see development of game in more nations with the funds being generated today. Boards would not require advertising the game when we see more nations with equal strength competing against each other nor back to back series in the same year.