The overdose of cricket has to stop
Another player joins the list of players injured while one has a close shave. The English test team has been facing an injury crisis which since the tour of India earlier this year which has reached a concerning state now as more players are getting injured and the phenomena does not seem to end.
The players of other teams are getting injured as well. England might have just ran ahead in the race of a global problem for the game. You want to have as much cricket as you can to make money. The television companies and cricket boards mostly share a complete agreement regarding this. The players do not. Though one school of thought says that you want to play as much as a player as your life as a professional sports person is limited, another counters that you want to play as much provided you are not doing permanent damage to your body which could shorter your career largely.
If you go down in history, international cricket was played far less. However, the county professionals did play many match days as well before the matches for county cricket was curtailed. So why are players getting injured now when we did not have such a situation in the past? The answer could lie in the level of play required for international cricket compared to international cricket. You cold have relaxed in the lesser important county matches. In international cricket, you want to make the best of the opportunity you get. Even against a minnow like Zimbabwe or Bangladesh, you want to make runs or take wickets for a) every one likes his career stats improved b) the fighting for playing XIs always exists.
That the players were not able to cope with too much cricket was evident when we saw them select one of the two forms of the game. A player retires early from one form of the game to preserve his career in the other form. As a result, we do not have the best players playing in each form of the game. The direct blame can be put to the excessive cricket effecting the players and thus depriving them of a longer career and the fans of seeing the best XIs on display.
The effect of too much cricket is that it reduces the attractiveness of the game. You no longer follow each ball or keep track of the figures of each player. You don’t even keep track of each game. Slowly but surely, the market attractiveness of the game reduces. The second effect is because of the best players not on display is largely the same. Memorable series which could have been played aren’t.
Even if we look at the recent past, we had memorable clashes between India and Australia. We have had the Ashes in 2005 which many regard as the best series they have seen. We did have Glenn McGrath miss tests 2 and 4 in that series as well while he was half fit for tests 3 and 5. Luckily, it didn’t have much effect on the fun of the Ashes. Some one say that it added to the fun.
Coming to the present, 2006 has seen England play with half their side injured in India. So, a series which promised so much, despite still being competitive, will not be remembered as a memorable series. Pakistan’s tour of England promised much more. However, we have all been disappointed, not because of the effort of the cricketers, but because of half the squad injured and the rest on hotlines with physios. Had this happened six months later, the most anticipated cricket series since the last Ashes would have lost half it’s attraction before it even began.
How much market value would cricket have lost had that happened? The players wouldn’t have liked that. The cricket boards or the television broadcasting companies wouldn’t have either. We could have seen it had it happened a bit later as the impact would have been much bigger. We ignore it right now as the small damages which dents the game do not seem as large right now. However, just as every run counts in the scorebook and for a team’s cause, so does the excessive cricket and each injury in reducing the stock of the game.
Tags: Engish Cricket.
