Triangular Tournment : Ind VS SL VS Ban
- Thread starter WubbaLubbaDubDub
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sohum
Executive member
Those are some ridiculous analogies.
First of all, football may be the dominant sport in the US, but it isn't anywhere close to as dominant as cricket is in India. Many college and even pro football players could have been pro basketball players, too, for example. Charlie Ward, for example, was a Heisman Trophy winner, MLB draftee, but ended up playing professional basketball in the NBA. Or take James Casey, who shorted a professional baseball career with the White Sox to come back and play college football with Rice and then went on to be drafted by the Houston Texans. In India, on the other hand, cricket is pretty much the only sport. You won't see kids playing multiple sports at a good enough level to even think about competing professionally, which is the reason we, as a nation, are athletically challenge and fail at every world sporting event.
Comparing HS Football to the IPL is even more ridiculous. First of all, the IPL is televised globally. HS football is only picked up by local channels who have nothing better to broadcast. While on the topic of local channels, it might be worth knowing that India doesn't have any. Almost all our channels are nationally televised. The few exceptions are channels run by cable companies and a few regional channels (ETV, DD, etc.). The only way these channels differ are the language being used. Secondly, the IPL is infinitely more lucrative than HS football. You won't see people buying HS football jerseys to show their support (and in fact the NCAA has even made it illegal to make money off a college athlete's name) whereas they do that for the IPL. HS football isn't a league comprising of professional athletes, the IPL is.
you may not agree but it is. I know cricket is THE main sports in India, and thats the only thing they follow. but Football is one of the most popular and dominant sports in the US, even with 2 other major leagues such as MLB, NBA. and there are other top random sports or "sports" too. (ice hockey, golf, boxing, tennis, nascar, Olympic etc). here we love to watch everything that has to do with superstars and celebrity. (seriously do you really think nascar deserves that much hype and popularity over the great game of cricket? but it is.) even with that many verity and options, football is able to keep the popularity and demand high above. right before this years NFL season i read a NFL article where it said 73% (84% with college football) of the American prefers football. its their most favorite. its not their fault that they have other things to watch too, but that doesnt mean football isnt dominant. it dominants all the other stuff. so that takes me back to the root of this off topic argument, why wouldnt (should) ESPN360 broadcast football? (and special when its only available for the US viewers)
i wasnt comparing IPL and HS football. i was making a hypothetical point. ok may be not high school, but college football is like IPL to US people. and again, i am NOT comparing IPL with college football. i am saying "as if".
Cricketman
ICC Chairman
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2005
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- USA
College football>NFL.
sohum
Executive member
You're contradicting yourself. You said football in the US is equivalent to cricket in India, which is nowhere near true. About 99% the Indian sports-watching population follow cricket. Greater than 75%, I would estimate, follow only cricket. The numbers just don't match up with football in the US. I know A LOT of people who only watch one sport and it is not football. It is this balance in sports interest that is the backbone for all-round athletic growth in the country. It is that all-round interest which has kids playing all the sports when they're young. They may all want to become the star quarterback, but they have other options if they don't make it. In India, it's cricket or nothing.
With HS football, you have no possible point to make. The Indian audience like the IPL far more than the American population like HS football. College football could be a different story. IMO, though, college sports in the US is not comparable to any sports league anywhere else in the world. That's because the system is so well-set in place. To become a professional athlete, you're going to have to go through that system. I would hazard that the system doesn't really exist so concretely in any other sports infrastructure in the world.
:doh what the hell? what that has to do with any of it?
American football gets more hyped over Cricket. ok you tell me, when was the last time you watched a High school cricket match being broadcast on TV? every Friday they broadcast High school football matches, and cover it on every local news ch. they get treated like some kinda star or pro
My god you people...what's wrong with you?
99.9% of the Americans don't even know what cricket is.
But was that my point?
I meant the Indian immigrant population in the United States is freakin' large, and they have no way to watch their fav sport other than turn to the internets or pay 200$ per match on Dish. And that, makes the demand for Cricket Streams more popular than any other sport. Don't believe me? 'Kay lets do a little google fight :
Google Trends: cricket live stream, nfl live stream, college football live stream
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1="live+cricket"&word2="live+nfl"
Say what?
On myp2p.eu, Sopcast streams for cricket specially involving India receive on a regular basis 10,000+ viewers per sopcast stream, compare that 1000-2000 per stream the big matches of NFL/MLB matches get. Why? Because they are also shown on TV. NOW, am I saying that Cricket>NFL in the U.S.?!
-__- Nice thinking there guys I thought you both were smarter http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/1796/1exploitableiamdisappoi.jpg
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any ways, Mashrafe isnt playing. That cricinfo article is a fail. He does well against India, and also always injured when BD plays India. 3 ODI match series back in 2004, he played the 1st 2, got a MOM and got injured and missed the 3rd one (and India went on to score over 350).
Then World Cup 07, MOM. then Missed out on the home series right after the WC. (was back on test though)
Then World Cup 07, MOM. then Missed out on the home series right after the WC. (was back on test though)
While NFL is the dominant sport, its a domestic sport, in a country with 300 million people, who also have to divide time for NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA and even more.
Cricket on the other hand, is next to being a religion in India, doesn't compete with any other sport and in a country with a couple billion people or something making it the second most watched sport worldwide.
And I don't get the bolded part, but opinions such are a nice thing to have. I have a question, what are you doing on these forums then? NFL forums are that way ---->
because i am not form India, cricket isnt my religion either. i follow all kinda sports. and cricket is one of them.
just because i follow other sports doesnt mean i am not allowed to be here. thats very rude on your part and i dont know where you guys taking this argument, but all i said was, football is big in US, just like how cricket is Big in India and ESPN is for US viewers why wouldnt they view football. and i am sticking to that. now, i didnt know you guys take that JUST that literally ...
again on that bold part, Football > Cricket on level of excitement, Cricket > Football, on my love and hobby, passion and enjoyment
I dont watch Cricket on Dish. Its daylight robbery. Sometimes I watch it on Willow.tv by paying money (if its cheap enough). I have a website where I have a $10/month subscription and I watch my cricket there (not sure how legal they are, but so far its been working so fine for me. cant reveal site name here).
Hope ESPN360.com becomes a good source for people in the US who want to watch regular cricket. I still dream of the day when cricket is telecast live in a sports channel here in America.
sohum
Executive member
If you made the statement "Football is big in the US; cricket is big in India", no one would make an argument about it. You tried comparing them with an analogy however, and you're still trying to do it. Let's consider some numbers, to make it more straightforward (and these numbers have been pulled out of my butt).
Let's assume India and the U.S. both have 1000 sports fans (the only way you can make comparisons is by equalling the base).
I would wager that 950 of these 1000 Indian fans watch cricket. I would further wager that > 800 of these 1000 fans watch only cricket (the second leader being soccer).
I would wager that 800 of the 1000 American fans watch football. I would guess that < 200 of these 1000 fans watch only football. Sports fans in the US are a lot more educated because they have a lot more competitive sports leagues to choose from.
So you see, the popularity of the sports in each country is not really comparable. I could find a higher percentage of people in the US who don't watch football than I could find people in India who don't watch cricket.
Anyways... if these two T20's and the first ODI in the Ind-Srl series is anything to go by, the Bangladeshi's may be in for a bit of stick.
yashwanth kumar
Panel of Selectors
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2008
- Location
- Bangalore , India
Any how it will be INDIA VS SRI Lanka final's .....
if you are going to talk about # of population (Indian) follows cricket, LOL then you can win the argument. with that huge population, nothing can beat that. but then this wasn't even my argument, so i wont even bother
Because they can also catch it on TV or the local newspaper or just go see it in the stadiums. But you had a point nonetheless.
Well given you're a Bangladesh cricket team fan who really have never been superpowers in cricket that's understood
j/k, I have several friends in India who didn't like cricket and are hardcore soccer fans, each to his own. I keep up with NFL and MLB and lately UFC has sparked a lot of interest in me but there's nothing like a cricket match with team India in it. I grew up watching them and playing the sport so yeah.
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sohum
Executive member
You obviously didn't bother to read or you read and didn't understand my argument. In fact, what you deduced was completely contradictory to what I was saying. I was saying that to make a fair comparison, you need to assume the population is the same in both countries--in other words, use percentages instead of raw numbers.
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