On October 18, as Pakistan-Sri Lanka series got underway, a somewhat rare occurrence took place. It was the first time since March 2004 that all ten test playing nations were in action simultaneously, in five different bilateral series. While Pakistan was playing Sri Lanka, India was taking on England, West Indies was battling Bangladesh, Zimbabwe was hosting New Zealand, and Australia was up against South Africa.
With so much cricket going on simultaneously, one cannot help but wonder whose purpose does this cricket overkill serve?
Ever since Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, and especially after the advent of multiple Twenty20 cricket leagues across the globe, cricket has become a money-spinning enterprise for the cricketers. With cricket now being played year round, owing to the high volume some might say that the players are the ones benefiting the most. While that holds true to a great extent, one also has to take into account the toll this is taking on the bodies of the players. Anyone who saw Zaheer Khan hobble off the field after bowling only 13.3 overs on the first day of India’s long, woeful summer in England would agree.
Moreover, with some players retiring from one form of cricket in a bid to prolong their career in the other, while others strategically taking some time off to save themselves for the tougher contests, it becomes evident that the bodies of modern-day athletes aren’t able to withstand the wear and tear that such a high volume of competitive sport inflicts on their bodies.
(The use of word ‘athletes’ instead of ‘cricketers’ is deliberate; earlier this year, world number two Rafael Nadal expressed concerns regarding the gruelling tennis schedule. Later on others, including the likes of Britain’s Andy Murray and world number one Novak Djokovic, echoed Nadal’s thoughts, with the former even hinting at a possible players’ strike). As a result of the excessive cricket, even the most ardent fans seem disinterested in the sport.
In India – where cricket is treated as religion and cricketers holier than deities – very few believers came to witness Dhoni’s men avenge the thrashing they received in England. Given that it was India’s first home series after their triumphant World Cup campaign, one would have expected a much better turnout, but at each of the five venues one could see rows upon rows of empty seats symbolizing dwindling interest due to the abundance of cricketing action. Even at the Eden Gardens, with India just one win away from sweeping the series, people were reluctant to fill the stands.
The low ticket sales might not make the authorities press the panic button, since the majority of revenue is generated through the sponsorship deals and television rights, but the dwindling interest must not be shrugged off. There is another aspect: the lack of interest was evident in the TV ratings, and these matches had a lower audience than that of the IPL and the final of the Champions League T20 final. These statistics reiterate the point that the viewers are more concerned with the quality of cricket than the quantity. Going back to the tennis overkill analogy, recently the 2012 version of the Hong Kong Tennis Classic, which has featured the likes of Roger Federer and JohnMcEnroe in the past, was cancelled due to the inability of the organisers to find a title sponsor.
Given the organisers’ insistence on quantity, even at the expense of the quality, cricket tournaments might suffer the same fate. High time for the organisers to sit down and brainstorm whose purpose does this cricket overkill serve?
Time to arrest the dwindling interest is now
