Cricket: A dying sport.

September 24, 2021

Introduction:

Cricket, the biggest sport in India, is considered to be a religion, followed by more than 1.3 billion people is a dying sport outside India. Cricket is majorly played in three formats, Test, One-Day, and the T20. For the past decade, only a few countries participate actively in Test Cricket. The number of ODI teams has also been reduced. Only a few countries play against each other, giving less opportunity for other teams to grow their talent.

Reasons:

One of the reasons why Cricket is a dying sport is because of its difficulty to understand rules. For someone who doesn’t know cricket needs to invest some time to understand the rules of the game and then understand the three formats. It becomes quite boring for a newcomer to watch Test cricket for 5 days and then see the result to be drawn. Another reason why cricket is dying is because of the expensive equipment required to play the sport. The professional Bat, ball and the kit cost quite a lot which everyone cannot afford, on the other hand, if you have a big ball and a pair of shoes you can start playing football. The main reason why cricket is dying is that the major cricket boards are looking to make short-term profits rather than investing in long-term goals. Nowadays only a few countries are playing Test format, the number of ODI teams has also been reduced in the World Cup. Earlier it used to be 14, but in the 2019 World Cup, only 10 teams participated.

Solution:

Let's be honest, we all enjoy watching a shorter format of cricket, that is T20. Test Cricket might be the original format of this game, but a quicker format of the game is all we need. We have many associate countries like Nepal, UAE doing good in this format and that's what as cricket fans we want to see. IPL has been a success because of the fast-paced T20 cricket where people can just tune in for 3 hours and enjoy. If the ICC can push the T20 cricket format to the Olympics, we might see more countries participating which would be great for the future of this sport.

Conclusion.

Cricket has been in existence for over 150 years, it has seen many champions but hasn't found much popularity as it should. Cricket is not growing, the main two formats of cricket are not as engaging as the T20. The cricket fraternity should focus more on T20 cricket and how more nations can participate in this sport.