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"Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually" - Stephen Covey

Friday, February 26, 2010

Should India stop playing international Cricket?

There is a case for it
India for long has been single handedly funding International Cricket.About 80% of the Cricket economy comes from India and all other Cricket Boards get huge revenues whenever India tours them through the sale of TV rights aimed at Indian viewers.It is time for India to make a bold decision and stop this leakage
This will be a good decision based on the American leagues.NBA,NFL,MLB all are domestic leagues with exclusive American players barring a few exceptions.But they still trump up their league as the "World" championship and have you ever wondered why the Baseball final series is called the World Series when USA does not even qualify for the finals in the recently concluded World Baseball championship.Japan won that year.America is very protective of its sport economy and have managed to keep it within its boundary.
They have managed to do it by creating a glitzy league and played down the International matches.The viewership for the US campaign for Basketball Gold in Olympics 2008 was abysmally low when compared with the ratings for the NBA Finals for that season.This provided the fact that USA came third in the recently concluded World Basket ball championship would have expected to increase the viewership for Olympics.
The reason is quite simple Americans simply dont care whether USA wins or loses in international matches but they are looking for the great visual experience in their domestic leagues which they can relate to their respective home cities.
I give full kudos to Lalit Modi for the creation of IPL which has already been valued at 4 Billion dollars for a 4 week tournament.There is scope for a couple of more leagues in cricket and it should be played year round and should try to have only Indian players as it will help to ensure that the entire sport economy of India stays within India.Indian viewers will also mature just like the Americans do and support the leagues.
Will any of this happen I dont think so.This is purely a business decision and our decision makers rarely use their heads when they make decisions.

2 comments:

Lakshmi said...

Absolutely right balaji. But will this happen? If it happens also, the government will get money only thro taxes. Is it OK, if I say that Govt should take ownership of these clubs / groups, etc...?

Anonymous said...

Ah! Finally someone who echoes my thoughts! I have been saying this for past 5 years, even before IPL started. Here are some of my articles on the subject:
http://aralikatte.blogspot.com/2008/02/be-patriotic-support-ipl.html

http://aralikatte.blogspot.com/2006/11/plan-for-restructuring-cricket.html

http://aralikatte.blogspot.com/2006/10/who-makes-money-from-cricket.html