6 replies to this topic

[drt]

Any cricket fans or players here?

[AllseeingEye]

Sorry a month long family trip to the UK in 1975 when I was 15 killed any chance of ever being a cricket fan - there were 3 channel options on TV in the hotel, including BBC1 and BBC2.....and *endless* hours of cricket and nothing but, aside from BBC News. I carry the scars to this day .

Interestingly though all hype about Super Bowl aside I understand that India-Pakistan cricket games typically draw more TV fans than the S-B by a very wide margin, with somewhere north of 1 billion viewers watching one of the most recent test matches.

[LJ]

^Yeah, but I will bet the advertisements on the all the cricket broadcasts for a year don't add up to what the Superbowl gets.

[drt]

Sorry a month long family trip to the UK in 1975 when I was 15 killed any chance of ever being a cricket fan - there were 3 channel options on TV in the hotel, including BBC1 and BBC2.....and *endless* hours of cricket and nothing but, aside from BBC News. I carry the scars to this day .

That's funny. Thankfully the shorter cricket formats seem to be taking over. No more endless hours of cricket.

^Yeah, but I will bet the advertisements on the all the cricket broadcasts for a year don't add up to what the Superbowl gets.

Definitely not, but cricket doesn't have a monolithic league like the NFL, nor the same high profile TV contracts.

[aastra]

...all hype about Super Bowl aside I understand that India-Pakistan cricket games typically draw more TV fans than the S-B by a very wide margin.

Outside of the US and Canada the audience for the NFL is tiny.

[AllseeingEye]

Outside of the US and Canada the audience for the NFL is tiny.

No question there; also - haven't looked it up but pretty certain this is a true statement - I'm quite certain World Cup TV viewership routinely exceeds anything the Super Bowl ever generated particularly outside of North America.

[drt]

It's claimed that the 2011 World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan was watched by almost a billion people, but that number is a little iffy.

One of the stories that flies completely under the radar here in Canada (seriously, no news site covers Cricket Canada) is the current stretch of utter incompetence from Cricket Canada. Nigel Reed from Sportsnet wrote about our recent "tour" of Trinidad & Tobago:

I've just returned from a five day trip, covering the Canadians' latest sojourn to the most southerly of the West Indies isles. The report card does not give rise to optimism anytime soon. There are few positives to work on for head coach Gus Logie, who was forced to watch his team outclassed in every format of the game.

...

The batting was too often laboured; the bowling too often wayward and the fielding was, at times, horrifying. I lost count of the number of misfields and dropped catches for which there is little excuse. These are the basics of cricket and Canada was found wanting.

To put this into context, the T&T was without about half of its best players, who are off playing for the West Indies or the BPL, and we were still slaughtered by them, even in Twenty20. At the level Canada is supposedly at we should at the very least be competitive with the T&T team, if not beating them.

On top of this, Canada is dead last in the standings for the World Cricket League Championship and the Intercontinental cup. Out of 12 matches between the two leagues Canada has won 1 (against Namibia, the second worst team) and the rest include some serious beat downs. At this rate it is highly unlikely that we will qualify for the 2015 World Cup.

Coming up in March Canada will be playing a series against Kenya in Dubai (because hey, why play in Canada?) and then the UAE in July/August.