Cricket As A Sport?

[Rohit Doshi]

Well, this has been going in my mind from quite a long time. First of all, please read the things well before jumping onto conclusions.

I will put forward some issues I feel and some things I want output from you all

We have seen some fantastic cricket over the past few years. There have been so many marque series like India's tour of Australia (08), England's tour of South Africa, Ashes, India's tour of South Africa, T20 World Cup, World Cup.

Have you guys noticed it's the same team again and again? Like its always India,Australia,England,Sri Lanka. For a fact even South Africa have played less cricket.

My point is why this uneven scheduling. People highly criticized the recently concluded Australia South Africa series where only 2 tests were played. Few years back South Africa toured India again only few tests played. India toured England 4 tests but.. why?

Adding to it, useless and meaningless half tours, like the one of England touring India straightaway after India toured England but only for ODI's? Why?

ICC really need to sit, yes they have all the resources like FTP and all correct but its not followed. I know relations between Pakistan and India have not been great but its Cricket, ICC needs to standardize things. India and Pakistan have to play cricket if not at home conditions for both.

Second problem is degrading of cricket. West Indies, New Zealand, Bangladesh have all had their cricket that has let down cricket.

All the teams might be good at one odd format but what's wrong? Like all the countries have proper domestic structures in place doing all sort of things but why are they not been able to find another Stephen Fleming or Shane Bond, or Brain Lara or Habibul Bashar? Whats wrong with the countries? Do we need more U-19 sort of tournaments? Do we need more Emerging players tournaments? or for a fact List A tournaments?

Just heard somewhere, there are problems faced by West Indies board to handle all the different islands its made up of. The Island have warned of a break down with the board. Now if at all these things happen will the ICC let 8 different teams to participate?

One major issue we face now a days is DRS.

Yes, BCCI is the money house in cricket right now, but why cant the other boards have the balls to oppose? Is money so important now? Cause if players want money they can easily participate in IPL and earn money but why other boards? Should the boards be paid salary from country governments? That should solve the issue. DRS has been successful in all the countries except India, so why dont ICC have a rule where the home team decides about the DRS usage? If for example Australia need DRs they will in upcoming series why the hell they need both countries to agree?

Please share your views

 

[sifter132]

Yes the Future Tours programme is unbalanced and generally it's all to do with money. The big countries (aus, eng, ind, sa) don't want to give up the longer series they've established just to include the lesser teams. It's pure greed really. That's why you get these random series popping up eg. Eng v Ind ODI series a month or so ago, next year Aus goes to Eng for a random ODI series. Instead India should be hosting Bangladesh or Australia should be touring Zimbabwe.

If it's 'beneath' those countries to play the lesser teams too often then I think one thing that could be done to solve that imbalance is to make the 'A' teams from the big countries tour the lesser nations instead. Because as it stands the big countries are going to play up to double the amount of Tests and ODIs in the next few years as teams like WI, Bang and NZ are going to. So fill their schedule with 'A' tours would be my solution.

One thing I'd also like to see is more former players getting onto boards in countries. There are too many politicians, and sometimes too many businessmen on these boards.

As for DRS, well that's a can of worms, but I'd really like the ICC to stick with whatever they decide!!!

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

yeah, plus the FTP is planned far too far in advance to make sense. up to 2020 is already pencilled in, sure these can change a bit but the whole thing is setup so as to incorporate these tours at the lengths already dictated.

india have 5 test and 4 test series in australia, england. whereas the west indies are pencilled in for loads of 3 and 2 test series everywhere.

ok the ashes will always be a draw, even if both teams plummet, but what if darren bravo leads the west indies to new heights? what if india's mass retirements leave them reeling.

series between teams with no rivalry like SAF and pakistan are just 2 tests in some cases. what if these two teams get their stuff together and are the no.1 and 2 in the world?

it's all speculative but to have the next 8 years rough drafted is ridiculous, there is no accounting for what might happen. It's only a blooming time table with 10 teams in it, surely every 4 years would be a much more sensible period of time.

This is a problem that the test championship was supposed to solve, so teams didn't shun better teams as valuable ranking points were up for grabs. of course this is one of the reasons the proposals broke down.

As it is, I think a fairer system might be using the distance between two teams to calculate the length of series a couple of years in advance. playing a team directly above or below, 4 tests, 2 or 3 places difference, 3 tests and opposite ends of the table 2 tests.

It might provide an incentive for weaker teams too, letting them try and get their ranking up to score more lucrative tours against bigger nations.

 

[Prithvi]

My opinion:

All the bilateral ODi tournaments should be canceled, a Champions Trophy should be held once in an year with a continental cup. World Cup should be held once in four years, with T20 World Cup for once in two years.

A nation should tour another nation only for test matches and T20i's. We have had ample number of ODi's, enough of over-playing them. Lets not cook many foods, since too many cooks spoils the dinner.

T20 games between domestic teams must increase, might be another CLT20 style tournament should be held for once in year.

 

[Bevab]

Sounds football styled!

 

[Aoun13]

I am in favour of having equal amount of games for top 8 teams atleast. 9 and 10 should have equal amount of ODIs and T20s.
You can't judge any team when you have such an unbalanced FTP. Cricket is just not for money. You need to play it as a sport first. ICC is just pretending that everything related to cricket is under control but at the moment cricket is at his worst face with almost no batting and bowling quality, too much one sided pitches, every country is trying to start an "IPL". It?s just like a mess. I agree with Dravid that useless cricket is way too much and eventually it will produce no interest among the fans. I was surprised to see empty seats in India vs England even though India won that 5-0. This all are after math of useless and unbalanced FTP.
With Australia loosing their glory days, the top 8 teams are almost equal, you don't have the difference of New Zealand and Australia of the past now. So now a balanced almost equal FTP is required.
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Every team should tour the other top 8 team once in four years by this I mean that every team will play the other top 8 team twice in four years. Each team will play a 5 match test series once against the other top 8 teams in the time interval of four years. There must be no test series of 2 or 4 test matches.
By this method all teams will play a sum of atleast 56 test matches in four years with atleast 21 matches at home while same amount will be for away matches against top 8 sides.

Top 8 teams will play once against 9-10 ranked teams in four years and those series will be away for first four years and home for the next four years. It should have 2 test matches.
9-10 will play same as top 8 teams will play with each other.
So now the total is 60 test matches per team in four years i.e 15 test matches per year for top 8 teams and 24 test matches for 9-10 ranked teams.

I guess by this method we can have a fair FTP and it will increase the interest of fans too.
For the lower ranked team i.e below 10, If a top 10 team didn?t win atleast 3 test matches in 4 years then the 11th ranked team will get the test status and it will exchange positions with 10th ranked team.

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

I really have given a thought about this, we should really make this professional and entertaining.

We can have a World Championship(Ranging over 4 years) between top 12 nations.Each nations plays an ODI home and away like a round robin thing and they should only play on Weekend's. At the end of 4 years, top 8 qualify for Knock Out cup(Substitute of world cup).

Like this way we can have 122 ODI matches over a span of 4 years that is 33 ODI matches per year which is a decent number. As we have 54 weeks in a year we can make use of 16 weeks for this and rest for T20's and Test matches.

Just a stupid idea though