General Cricket Thread ...

[rajitghosh]

Yeah the court case, Henty Blofeld's liking for earrings and prawn curry and naan and Boycott's grandmother and how all that transformed cricket broadcast in India can be a story for another day.

[PKBasu]

The insult to NKP Salve and SS Ray (not being given tickets to the 1983 World Cup final) rings very true. (SS Ray had anti-imperialism in his blood, no doubt, but he was married to Maya Ray, nee Bhattacharya, whose father was a very well-known doctor/surgeon? in London, so he spent part of the summer there).
I was in the stands at the Hove (Sussex) for the India-South Africa match of the 1999 World Cup -- and was surprised to find Jagmohan Dalmiya (then the president of the ICC) seated (along with Mascarenhas) a few rows behind me in the plebeian stands. Even when he was president of the ICC, Dalmiya wasn't given pavilion tickets!

[prasen9]

Given that we have an ODI World Cup and a T20 World Cup, with the rejuvenation of Champions Trophy, maybe the T20I World Cup should be held every three years instead of two. I understand a WC makes a ton of money and the ICC wants to milk it to the extent it can. If people are fine and will watch a WC every other year, that is fine by me. Just my personal preference. This may well be because India won both the T20I WC and Champions Trophy and I want us to savour them for a bit more time. Maybe if India had lost the cup in the final or so, I would have wanted another chance to come in two years. For me, four years is too long. Three years is the Goldilocks zone. But, somehow people don't seem to like odd numbers for things like these.

I would like the Olympics and the Football World Cup every three years too. Four years is too long to wait and in some sports a sportsman may peak right after one Olympic and the peak may not physically hold until the next. Three years makes it more likely that sportsmen will have multiple chances if they choked in one game for games where your peak is say 5 years - you can almost get two chances with a 3 year difference between games. When it is four, you can get one and when your peak is right in the middle, both Olympics may be in bad years for you even if you get two chances, i.e., in a year when you are starting to peak and then again when you are starting to decline ...

Anyway, bring on the next T20I Cup. I am interested in seeing our youngsters.

[arjun2761]

Do agree that a 4 year gap is quite large for major events given how short the athletic peak is for many athletes. Seems like the Olympics and World Cup soccer were set up to interleave their 4 year gaps.

3 years would be a good compromise as 2 years feels like it is too frequent. Perhaps, the logistics and resources needed to conduct a full Olympics weighs towards keeping it on a 4 year cycle.

[prasen9]

Sure, I had not considered the cost and logistics for an Olympics.

[PKBasu]

Today is the 14th anniversary of the 2011 ODI World Cup victory. It's interesting that there isn't quite the hype around that team that there is around the 1983 World Cup winning side.

And, similarly, the fate of the 2007 T20I World Cup winning side is also rather forlorn. I ran into RP Singh at my daughter's equestrian club yesterday, and reminded him of that final -- and the lack of hype around it. He took 3/26 in that final. Although Irfan's 3/16 somewhat overshadowed Rudra Pratap, the latter got the key wickets of Md Hafeez and Kamran Akmal with the new ball. There really ought to be far more hype around that team, and not just Joginder Sharma