Yet, something similar happened over the last few weeks in cricket. The Indian team thrashed the English 5-0 in the one-day international series but only die-hard cricket fans seemed to care. I find it hard to recall another series featuring India that generated as little excitement among my friends or on Twitter and Facebook. The stadiums were half-empty even in Mumbai and Kolkata. Television ratings were well below normal for a series featuring India, according to news reports.
Cricket today is played in three formats, test cricket (the sacrosanct version of the game that started in the 1870s and is played over five days), the 50-overs format (one-inning consisting of 50 overs and matches usually lasting eight hours) and the new T20 format (each side has 20 overs and matches last about three hours). An additional development over the last few years has been the introduction and subsequent success of club cricket (similar to club football), with the Indian Premier League leading the way. Cricket finds itself in a tough situation having to find the right balance among all three formats and international and club cricket.
Unfortunately, the sport lacks a cohesive policy to deal with this issue largely because the governing body for the sport, the International Cricket Council (I.C.C.), is driven by the policies of the cricket organizations of individual countries. For instance, the men who control the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the body that administers the sport in India and manages the national team’s schedule, organize bilateral and triangular series in which teams play each other for little more than meaningless trophies. For instance, why did it schedule the India-England series in October, given that India just toured England in the summer?
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