Below
headlines from various newspapers / magazines are giving subtle hints that
cricket is losing its shine and its time to stop big investments in Cricket infrastructure:
· Cricket in Britain is under threat from its own success
· Cricket is losing the popularity contest
· Numbers say it all: Cricket, India’s biggest religion, fast losing followers;
· Have people in India started to shift to other sports from cricket?
· Is cricket no longer the sought-after sport for advertisers in India?
· Cricket losing popularity in India
Detailed
story can be read in the links provided in references.
Under the
shadow of signals instead of understanding them we are ignoring it. The reason
being the “Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) has decided to renovate the Sardar
Patel Stadium (also known as Motera Stadium) in Ahmedabad after which it will
become the largest cricket stadium.” (From DNA newspaper).
The stadium
will increase its capacity from 49,000 to 1,10,000 (overtaking Melbourne
Cricket Ground which can hold 1,00,024 people).
Instead of
having a Cricket stadium, Government should interfere and have a multi sports
stadium erected in its place.
Further, under
rotation policy a stadium like Wankhede in Mumbai is hosting cricket from 8th
December 2016 after 3 years i.e. last test match was played on 16th November
2013 (Sachin Tendulkar farewell test).
There are 14 active stadiums where test
cricket were played since 2006. Total 49 test matches were played in India since
2006 (excluding the test match between India and England started on 8th
December 2016).
Year wise
and ground wise data (For Test) is provided below:
Year 2000
|
|||||||||||
Cricket
Grounds
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
15
|
16
|
Total
|
Punjab Cricket
Association
IS Bindra Stadium
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
7
|
||||
Eden Gardens
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
6
|
||||
Vidarbha Cricket
Association Stadium
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
1
|
5
|
||||||
Feroz Shah Kotla
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
5
|
|||||
M Chinnaswamy Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
5
|
|||||
Sardar Patel Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
4
|
||||||
Wankhede Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
4
|
||||||
Green Park
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
3
|
|||||||
MA Chidambaram Stadium
|
2
|
1
|
3
|
||||||||
Rajiv Gandhi
International Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
3
|
|||||||
Holkar Cricket Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
|||||||||
Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy
Cricket Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
|||||||||
Brabourne Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
|||||||||
Saurashtra Cricket
Association Stadium
|
1
|
1
|
|||||||||
Total
|
2
|
3
|
9
|
3
|
7
|
3
|
6
|
6
|
4
|
6
|
49
|
In case of One Day International (ODI) total 107 matches were played between 1st January 2006 and 9th December 2016 i.e. average of 11 ODIs per year. There are around 28 grounds where ODIs were played.
Year wise ODIs details is presented below:
Also Gujarat Lions (IPL team) is eligible to play for 2016 and 2017 only.
The question is when will Motera get an opportunity to host a test match since India plays on an average 5 test matches and 11 ODIs in a year (2006-2016).
Year wise ODIs details is presented below:
Year
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
2016
|
Total
|
Count
|
9
|
20
|
5
|
11
|
9
|
18
|
1
|
16
|
8
|
5
|
5
|
107
|
Also Gujarat Lions (IPL team) is eligible to play for 2016 and 2017 only.
The question is when will Motera get an opportunity to host a test match since India plays on an average 5 test matches and 11 ODIs in a year (2006-2016).
Hope this
investment does not turn out to be a white elephant.
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment