The too much cricket issue has been a point of debate all over the cricket world of late. BCCI added 25 days to the Indian cricket calender to the disgust of many.

Sanjay Manjrekar puts in his perspective in the May issue of Cricinfo magazine:

However, there is a fundamental difference between sport and business: making profits for shareholders or maximising earnings can never be the primary objective for sports administrators. It is important for the BCCI to grasp that it’s top priority should be ensuring the long-term health of the game, including players.

It is a fine piece written by Manjrekar. The magazine also has a piece by Sidharth Mongia which speaks on the poor system of umpiring which exists in India - the result of which is that no Indian is a part of the Elite panel of ICC umpires.

The BCCI talks of making money and what not. How much of it is the board giving back to the game? There are some initiatives for constructing new stadiums. However, domestic cricket promotion and marketing, initiatives to develop the game in the country remain missing.

A few days earlier, while speaking with Rick Eyre, he stated:

India has 60 times the population of Australia, and they need to set an objective of having 60 times as many world-class standard cricketers.

A good objective to have definitely. Ashok Malik recently put down a few objectives the Indian board can have.

Is the BCCI listening, though? A reader, Jason Smart from Australia, wrote in the letters to the editor in the same issue of Cricinfo magazine:

I can think of very little India has done to shape the game that has not already been done by some one else. It may be the case that India has made it more visible, but heck, if New Zealand had one billion people then they would be more visible too.

True. What has India done for world cricket? It has brought in the money because of the demand which exists in India, but what apart from that? What has India done for cricket in India itself?

Money is coming into Indian cricket but when we look back 10, 15 years down the line, will we be able to say cricket developed in the nation because of the money? Till cricket truly develops at grass roots, cricketers at all levels get their due and every thing in between fits into place (for example, the standard of umpiring, the way media is handled) I do not see how India can be called the leader in world cricket.

There is so much the BCCI can do for cricket in India. There are so many areas which remain neglected. It never fails to annoy me. Maybe I shouldn’t love Indian cricket so much.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 9:19 am and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.