Ok, now that it is all settled in football world about who the champion is, it is time to look back at the cricketing world and see what happened during World Cup Football. One change was prominent as far as the newspapers in India were concerned, that football was given wide coverage in the back pages and even in the front pages which predominently belonged to cricket news at any time in India. Not only national newpapers, even regional newspapers were not far behind in this. With this, cricket news shifted to more inner pages with photos in black and white.
Important records were made, broken during this time. Waise bhi cricket me records ki kami nahi hai. Most importantly, it seems that 400 is no longer a run everest in an ODI which no team dared to climb in 35 years of ODI history, with already 3 teams scoring above 400 runs this year. Latest addition to this is Sri Lanka, scoring 443 for 9 against Netherlands. Australia climbed the run everest 434 for 4, March this year proudly. But joy of Australians was short-lived with South Africa outplaying them scoring 435 for 9 with a delivery left, thus the Australian record not even lasted for 4 hours. And now it is the turn South Africans with their record lasting not even 4 months. Cricket is like that, a game of glorious uncertainities.
Partnerships in ODIs is one aspect of the game where Indians have built upon their own records, with wicketwise 5 of the partnership records are in the name of Indians out of 10. But this time their record 1st wicket partnership came under threat and broken again by Sri Lankans Tharanga and Jayasuriya putting on 286 runs for the first wicket against England. Previous best was between Ganguly and Tendulkar for 258 runs against Kenya.
Coming to the impact of football on cricket, England team escaped big media bashing for their dismal 0-5 loss to Sri Lanka in the ODI series with most media covering more football news than anything else. Sachin's exploits in England gained mileage only in cricket sites like cricinfo.com but in otherdays he made news everywhere he went. Jayasuriya became the second highest in number of hundreds scored in one day cricket, a place jointly held by former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly.
I bought Sportstar last week to get to know more about India's series victory in the Caribbean only to find out that only 4-5 pages dedicated to this, which covered the last two tests between India and West Indies. I thought sab football ki mahima hai.
Raveesh
Important records were made, broken during this time. Waise bhi cricket me records ki kami nahi hai. Most importantly, it seems that 400 is no longer a run everest in an ODI which no team dared to climb in 35 years of ODI history, with already 3 teams scoring above 400 runs this year. Latest addition to this is Sri Lanka, scoring 443 for 9 against Netherlands. Australia climbed the run everest 434 for 4, March this year proudly. But joy of Australians was short-lived with South Africa outplaying them scoring 435 for 9 with a delivery left, thus the Australian record not even lasted for 4 hours. And now it is the turn South Africans with their record lasting not even 4 months. Cricket is like that, a game of glorious uncertainities.
Partnerships in ODIs is one aspect of the game where Indians have built upon their own records, with wicketwise 5 of the partnership records are in the name of Indians out of 10. But this time their record 1st wicket partnership came under threat and broken again by Sri Lankans Tharanga and Jayasuriya putting on 286 runs for the first wicket against England. Previous best was between Ganguly and Tendulkar for 258 runs against Kenya.
Coming to the impact of football on cricket, England team escaped big media bashing for their dismal 0-5 loss to Sri Lanka in the ODI series with most media covering more football news than anything else. Sachin's exploits in England gained mileage only in cricket sites like cricinfo.com but in otherdays he made news everywhere he went. Jayasuriya became the second highest in number of hundreds scored in one day cricket, a place jointly held by former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly.
I bought Sportstar last week to get to know more about India's series victory in the Caribbean only to find out that only 4-5 pages dedicated to this, which covered the last two tests between India and West Indies. I thought sab football ki mahima hai.
Raveesh
Hi.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a die hard fan of cricket, I just keep myself informed of major happenings by reading newspaper next day. So can't comment much on this post.
keep blogging.
but at a point don't you think cricket is getting too much importance?
ReplyDeleteShould we not promote other sports with more consideration? Cricket keeps happening through out the year. I don't see any wrong in importance given to football, since its once in a four year event...
hi nidhi,
ReplyDeleteIts not the question of giving importance to cricket discussed here. It just tells how in a country which does not feature even in the qualifiers for the world cup and where cricket is a religion, reacts during World Cup Football in a different way.
Ya, I agree with you that cricket is getting too much importance. Money and media attention should be diverted to other sports.
cricket is religion in india by default. we stand at 3rd position (in ratings) out of 9 test playing nations !!. we dont have such a position in any other outdoor sport.
ReplyDelete"It just tells how in a country which does not feature even in the qualifiers for the world cup"
raveesh, you dont want India to be football playing nation. Media has no wrong job by concentrating on Football. Everyone expects India to qualify for Football World Cup one day......
Media has not completely ignored Cricket during Football World Cup. There was discussion in CNN-IBN whether "Rahul Dravid is greatest batsman of our times ". This was after India's historic win in West Indies.
hi shande,
ReplyDeletereg :"raveesh, you dont want India to be football playing nation" It was never said that way. It simply tells current facts that foot ball infrastructure is bad in India and nothing else. Recently, Indian football star Baichung Bhutia was quoted saying he would quit.