Posted by Here’s a comparison. The Rugby World Cup finished last Saturday. England played in the final. Their next international fixture will be on the second of February.
England’s final match in the Cricket World Cup was on the 21st of April, against the West Indies. Their next international fixture, a Test match, also against the West Indies, was on the 17th of May. If by some miracle they’d made the final of the World Cup, it was played on the 28th April.
Okay, so maybe every cricket website you read is repeatedly making this point and maybe every newspaper too, but the fact is we’re all right about it. International cricket is no longer special. The word ‘everyday’ can be synonymous with ‘mundane’ – the everyday grind; your everyday clothes. Mundane, commonplace, routine, everyday. Cricket is played every day.
Cricketers ‘retire’ from one-day internationals or Tests in their twenties; players are rested from matches or even tournaments; and international fast bowlers cut their pace to increase their longevity.
The latter’s been happening in county cricket for years. It’s something county cricket’s always been criticised for. ‘Too many matches mean that there are no fast bowlers on the county circuit, so young batsmen aren’t prepared for Test cricket’.
Well now its relentless fixture list is perfect preparation.
And yes, we appreciate the irony that we’ve published this article today due to a lack of international cricket in the last two days, before anyone picks up on that.
Everyday clothes mundane!!
I didn’t get a nickname of Suave, by wearing mundane clothes, dear boy!
But, that aside, I do agree completely. I am still watching the scores tick over on circinfo for every match, but I’m finding it difficult to get enthusiastic about any of them…
There might as well be no international cricket today with Afridi having got himself out for a duck on his fourth ball. Now we’re stuck with watching the rest of the Pakistan team nudge a few singles an over for the next 30 overs.
isn’t also parly due t the lack of a strong and popular domestic scene (at least here in England) . Unlike football, and even the rugby (both codes) most people only care about cricket internationals?
Is Twenty20 going to resolve thins?
That’s a very good point, Scientician.
We’d be tempted to give you credit for it if you weren’t troublemaking on the previous post.
i think i may be alone in this, but, i don’t like twenty20, not only because of how stupid the name is…. but because it reminds me of schoolboy lunchtime cricket. in all honesty, the one day game isn’t much better. test match is the only really worthwhile form. the ups and downs over five days, what other sport can offer the rollercoaster ride, such joy at lunch, followed by depression by tea! and after five gruelling days…… a draw! huzzah! anything less than the five day game, including the county 4 day version, just isn’t cricket. oh and please never mention that stupid, ridiculous and pointless 40 over version! if you want to make cricket more exciting introduce more cheerleaders…. or possibly clowns…. a whole; duck to miss a swinging plank of wood, hit him on the return routine… perfect. past that, stop the tinkering, oh and drop rob key, he offends my eyes.
He is not a scientician for nothing . . . the Indian Cricket League was supposed to be first step in creating a popular domestic structure in the country where it just might work, The ICL would have been a truye professional domestic league with well-financed teams designed to draw in the largest crowds possible. The idea was to create a situation where players can make nearly as much or more money playing domestically as internationally, which in turn would have forced the ICC to reduce the international fixture list to something closer to what we see in football, major international tournaments timed as to not interfere with domestic seasons..
However, this was squashed by the ICC’s blanket support of national board’s decisions to ban for “life” anyone signing with the ICL, the squashed completely by the BCCI’s sanctioned “response league” (if there is such a thing), the Indian Premier League. I originally suspected that the IPL was designed simply to draw players away from, and ultimately kill the ICL, after which the IPL itself would have served its purpose and also be disbanded. I still suspect this may happen, but India’s success in Twenty/20 and failure in Fifty/50 have improved its chances of getting off the ground quite a bit. Unfortunately, being run by the BCCI, IPL will never be allowed to threaten the revenues that BCCI gain from non-stop international cricket, so we are more likely to see the international and domestic seasons running in parallel, which in turn will reduce the IPL to a kind of sideshow rather a true premier league.
So there is really no hope . . .
Hello everybody, my name is Damion, and I’m glad to join your conmunity,
and wish to assit as far as possible.