Looking at this from a sports person's perspective, it is highly unfair and it's a grave injustice to the other sports both by the media and the Government policies. But cricket has become much more than just a sport. Akin to YouTube, a site that gets its 9/10 page rank purely because of its visitors; cricket is becoming a large scale business. India might not be the richest country in the world but the Indian cricket board is the richest in the world with better revenues than any other cricket board including the Australian board. Actors, business men, politicians, product companies and almost everyone with a considerable chunk of money has invested their black, white and gray money in Cricket. A recent statistics that I read in my friend's blog says Ishanth sharma (the newbie pace bowler) is getting hundreds of thousands of rupees for every ball he is bowling in the IPL! That is the level to which money has been liquidated through Cricket.
All said and done, as long as there are folks who worship Cricket and the players it's quite natural that investors would look at Cricket as a Golden duck that takes their products to a larger group of people and converts the bars in their returns charts into skyscrapers. It'd be great if the Government can do something to make the other sports equally popular attracting more and more investors there by helping sports, sportsmen and the best of all - Indian economy.
3 comments:
I agree with your views. But, its not only the problem with the fans. Its the problem with every damn thing in this country. Right from media to ad agencies. How many of us know that India won the Nehru cup last year at the same time when India won T20 World cup. It lacks proper publicity.
I admit, I am too a fan of cricket though not a fanatic. But I stay awake and watch most of the EPL matches also. Because they are interesting. If you are not aware, EPL players are paid much more than our Indian cricketers. Manchester United is the 2nd richest sports club in the world. 1st place is occupied by Real Madrid which is again a foot ball club. Rooney was considered to be hero with only one FIFA world cup.
So, every country has its share of madness towards a sport. But in India its a big business as the population is more which increases the number of people watching, rather I would say following a sport.
Our Govt shud definitely take steps to make publicize other sports as well. No doubts on that.
Media and ad agencies are like parasites. They look for favorable ground and capitalize on it. As long as people don't show interest in other sports, media and ad agencies are not going to give a damn about them!
Soccer is a game that is watched by 75% of the world population and no wonder real madrid and Manu are the richest clubs in the world. Again it is a question of viewers and their interests.
To comment on the madness portion of it, the countries that are die-hard soccer crazy declare that as their national game and hardly anything else is played there. But here, you have all sporting activities going on and the national game is hockey but we play, watch and live cricket. That's the irony!
I don't blame cricket for that. In fact I'm happy that this pumps in a lot of money... Just that it would be great if the other sports are made as popular too!
The countries which play foot ball for instance UK have all other kinda games and watchers as well...even then if you turn to the sports page of any daily, football occupies 75% of the space and in the remaining space 75% is given to cricket...UK is mad about cricket as well...good that we stuck to only one game and mad about it :D...
Making cricket as our national game will solve the problem, isn't it :)?...
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