Champions league T20: the overkill of international cricket
As it is, with the ODI and Test formats of the game many people have argued that the players have a stressing calendar, and with the advent of the “champions’ league of T20” it raises multiple questions. Firstly, will it result in fatiguing the players and affect their overall fitness before the international matches are played. Secondly, is cricket now more relying on the entertainment aspect of the game, making it more commercial than ever before and bringing in big bucks for all the stakeholders? If the entertainment aspect is true, which it most certainly is, since 4 over’s can never judge the quality of the bowler and neither can 20 overs truly appreciate the quality of the great batsmen, then it is resulting in the gradual degradation of the game.
Slogging the ball mindlessly is no art, however, stroking it with precision is an art that receives little appreciation in the shorter format of the game, which is all about scoring big runs. The Indian Premier League Twenty20 and now the champions’ league has blurred the line between sport and entertainment. Is it cricket or World Championship wrestling played with a bat and ball?
One can never be sure. To add to that, the IPL has also been responsible for incorporating “s**y cheerleaders” for cricket matches. It makes, people fathom if it is the “s*x” they plan on selling or the sport itself. There was once a time when old-fashioned conservatives used to admire the game of cricket for its own sake and not for s**y cheerleaders or Jacuzzi’s in the stadiums. However, that is a thing of the past. With every passing day, the champions’ league and the shorter format of the game i.e. Twenty20’s are gnawing chunks of the great cricketing history of the past by simply making it forgettable. With a 2 and half hour match, and that too quite a few of them people will no longer remember cricketing matches that were known to produce great legends such as Don Bradman, Sir Gary Sobers, Brian Lara, Sir Vivian Richards, Hanif Mohammad to mention a few.
The wealthy Board of Control for Cricket in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 has helped create and foster the perfect environment for corruption in the games played. By setting up a new competition and surrounding it with parties interested in bidding, the players and their suitors are allowed to mingle around freely and refused to pay the $ 1 million to get the Anti Corruption and Security Unit involved until this year.
Therefore, for the first two years of its inception it has been a haven for bookies, corruption and gambling with one expert who described the second IPL, held in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 last year, as a “bet fest.” He also mentioned how dozens of bookmakers flew over for the contest from India.
Paul Condon the former head of the ACSU warned that “the IPL brings with it the biggest threat in terms of corruption in the game since the days of cricket in Sharjah.”
However, keeping the world of gambling aside, and focusing on just the sporting aspect of the event, it seems more of an overkill of what was previously cricket with cricket having been reduced to a forgettable contest of the most powerful ‘slogger’ who gets it all.
The mind-boggling amount of money involved in the game, also means that the cricket stars now would not want to focus much on making a career, rather the focus would be on getting the best bid and contract from the bidders, make huge money and fade into oblivion. A phenomenon that has been observed of the Indian players, with a few exceptions, that they have faded into oblivion despite the huge amount of talent that they promised. With the game turning more and more commercial with every passing day it is indeed sad to see the essence of cricket being sold for just a few bucks, and if that is to be the case, then the cricketing authorities have proven to be not much different from the match-fixers, who are willing to make big bucks by compromising their careers. Traditionally there are three wise monkey’s who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. “The ICC board appears to have a lot more.”
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