Will India Win Australia in T20 Cricket Today?
Posted : September 23, 2007 at 12:08 am [IST]
I have never been a fan of cricket rather to a great extent I used to hate the game, particularly the five daylong test matches. Sometimes my sons bunked their school to watch it on TV. In Calcutta, I used to find many of my subordinates missing for the days when the test matches happened to be played in Eden Gardens, Calcutta. I could not but curse the game. One dayer was better, but I didn’t like even that. But this new Twenty20 game is real innovation making the game contemporary.
“The new format is a revolution in brevity, designed for television. In a Twenty20 game each team bowls 20 overs-each consisting of six deliveries, the cricket equivalent of a baseball pitch-at the opponent’s batsmen. By contrast, one-day cricket, the established short form of the game, is usually 50 overs a side. And test-match cricket, the marathon worshipped by purists, is not limited by overs at all. Each game lasts a maximum of five days.”
“Twenty20″, a new three-hour version of the elegant and at times seemingly interminable game, is serious business. South Africa Twenty20 world tournament, at which the top 12 cricket-playing countries are represented, is playing to sell-out crowds. Cricket is the single shared passion of over a billion people in India. This brings in vast revenues. In 2005 the BCCI generated around $50m, mostly from broadcasting rights. This year it will turn over some $300m. And that is before it feels the effects of Twenty20, which could be seismic.”
- Source Economist
Religiously I go through ‘Economists’ on every Friday morning on Internet. It is considered the best for data and information (though not the views) that can be blindly relied upon. Unfortunately it appears to me as biased against India and Indians. Many a times you don’t find even a single article about India in its issue. I was amazed when this week article was on cricket’s new avatar Twenty20 game. It reminded me of my experiences with the matches going on in South Africa in the first ever Tewnty20 World cup.
I happened to watch India vs. New Zealand match for sometime where ultimately India lost. I felt bad and decided not to watch the matches again. In next match India won over Pakistan because of its bowlers. I learnt about the way it was decided by five balls from each team and its success rate after they equaled the scores. I still never thought of watching the next match. I heard from my friend Popli during our morning walk about the match India won against England and the brilliant batting of Yuvraj Singh who scored a sixer on each ball in an over and created a world record. Popli was really very much happy and excited about the win. But still I didn’t watch the next match of India with South Africa that was to decide if India would move to semifinals. And again I could hear only from Mr. Popli about the wonderful bowling by RP Singh who could get four wickets.
Media is agog with the news from South Africa. It is more so as all the old hands- Tendulkar, Dravid, and Ganguly, are absent from the team. Dhoni is the captain and Yuvraj is his deputy.
Today India is going to play its semifinal match with unbeatable Australians. Can Dhoni’s boys win this too? Should I see the match? Even if I don’t see I wish them a win. I shall prefer to hear the news of win from others rather than undergoing the pain and agony of poor performance of India. But some amount of credit must go to the film ‘Chak De! India’. I find India winning many matches these days.
Let it be Chak De! India again tonight.
And it was CHAK DE! INDIA Again. India own again..
- Indra
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