Baby, you like it?

Cricket has for long caught the attention of the average Indian’s mind and body like nothing else. But, interesting statistics put cricket at second to none other than football in terms of team-sport viewership and analyses point the recent success to the advent of T20. Lot of history behind the 130 years old sport that the Englishmen gave birth to although; India’s innate Gilli-danda is proclaimed to be the genesis of this wonderful game.

History reminiscences about the unlimited-time Test match played once upon a time to the 60-overs ODIs. Till then, the marketing of the sport was dogmatic concerning only the aristocratic, but, in 1977, the Australian Kerry Packer involving Channel Nine turned things around with his Supertests involving a bunch of Australian delights against the World’s superstars under lights for the very first time in history. As an expected retaliation from any human congregation to changes, the Kerry-Packer series was amidst myriad controversies. The ACB (Australian Cricket Board) and the others who controlled the game then, rebuked the idea (What did they know that “An idea can change your life sirji”) and castigated it. Luckily, BCCI was not a part of that “others” group as we were still finding our feet in the deep waters of 60-overs ODIs.

Finance is the key to any market and when the ACB found themselves smooching bankruptcy, the only option that they had was to break-up with their narrow-minded thinking. Kerry either wasn’t doing that well to afford a holiday package in the Great Barrier Reefs, but, he was patient enough to envision beyond the horizon. As it all happened a deal was stuck to give Channel Nine exclusive telecast rights and autonomous power to market cricket in Australia.

West Indies won back-to-back World Cups in 1975 and 1979 and thanks to them that the helmet was invented in one of the Supertests played in 1977-78. Surprisingly from nowhere came the underdogs (or the Slumdogs??) lifting the 1983 coveted trophy for the first time. May be one good thing about cricket then was that, whatever you did, it went into the record books as “for the first time”. Four years later, the Asian sub-continent hosted the World Cup. Again, it was for the first time. In 1992, back Down Under, the World Cup was played with the colours replacing Whites and the white replacing the red cherry, for the first time.

Things happened and cricket a 50-over a side sport ,started attracting people from all over the world. Apart from The Ashes and the Indo – Pak series, the World Cup was the only other, much watched programme with respect to cricket. Cricket then went to a dormant phase where the routine took over the turbulence, until the Match-fixing controversy hit the scene in 2000. Again, for the first time a magnitude of such sorts was achieved in the sport. The Men-in-dark-blue went pale much before the 1996 World Cup and the meaning to the change in contrast of their jersey’s colour was understood by the average Indian, as late as 2000. A complete re-jig was done to save cricket and the retired-cricketers-turned-management-gurus were apprehensive over losing the billion Indians, if not millions at least. The fact that, cricket is in the second position in viewership is attributed to the fanatics from the sub-continent where the population is also really high. (A real bad move by football and other sports to leave out the Asian sub-continent to market their sport) Attributing to this reasoning, was India’s march to the 2003 World  Cup Final, a part of the marketing gimmick to save the sport in India. Absurd as it sounds, because, if that was the case, India would have won the tournament. The average Indian has been treated by their stalwart cricketers as a sinusoidal wave with interests peaking, attaining a maximum and then starting to stoop.

The anti-climax of the changes that the game underwent was with the advent of T20s. May be they got their idea from the rain-truncated matches which used to be a 25-overs a side affair that pulled the crowds to the grounds despite the rains. T20s was a flabbergasting hit right from the word “Go”. Or, was it we the Indians who were on cloud nine when India won the inaugural World Cup in 2007, again for the first time? The World Cup triumph gave birth to IPL (Indian Paisa League. Oops!! Indian Premier League) which was an idea stolen from ICL (Indian Cricket League) of Zee Sports. What happened next is definitely not history, but controversies. Players who went to the ICL because they will never get a chance to play for their country and they also need to feed the cricket fanatics of their family were banned by BCCI. This happened when BCCI was not even aware of the potential that the T20 format possessed. IPL happened only after our World Cup triumph and they were not even ashamed to acknowledge the fact that the idea was indeed stolen. Similar to what ACB did to Kerry-Packer Series, although not the same. Then in chronology came the spot-fixing or the great Pakistani torrents of mishaps. Should I even talk about them? Better to leave it at the authorities’ hands to provide justice to the game.

Today we have different leagues and cricket is shaping into a massive crowd puller, just like football. Sirjis, please capture the market of China as well, before football takes them over completely. With China and USA in the foray, one day I dream cricket to be the most loved and viewed team sport in the world and I pray that my dream comes true which will be the actual climax.