It is nowhere near as entertaining as basketball. Even baseball is more entertaining as the action still moves faster than cricket. Strikeouts and home runs are quite exciting as is baserunning and fielding.
Cricket is only number one in 4 nations: India, Pak, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka...Although the Aussies are consistently the best, Aussies play a lot of sports(Tennis, Basketball and yes, even Baseball, rugby, football)...All of Eastern Asia follows BASEBALL...Even Africa is more and more into Basketball and Football. Western europe is dominated by football, tennis....Eastern Europe has football and basketball....Western asia is also into basketball(Turkey and Israel).
Cricket is in serious trouble...Even if India is the world's 4th largest economy, that isn't going to do anything to sell the game abroad...If anything, those other sports will permeate the Indian market and reduce the market dominance of cricket.
It's embarrassing enough that a country of a billion people can't win a single medal....Don't select cricket teams on caste and connections and don't select olympic teams on caste and connections. Select on talent.
How come the BCCI has never done anything to promote cricket at the national level?....How come there is not an Indian professional league with teams in all of the top Indian markets?
You may say "There already are teams"...My response: What channel was the game on?. BCCI should be able to gather money from advertising and promoting cricket on the city level. They should be able to give television rights to one of the major networks to televise games....They can easily garner corporate sponsorship for the teams involved...
If there was a team in Bangalore, every corporate would be lining up to use cricket to promote their products..
BCCI has failed miserably thus far to milk advertising revenue from the top corporations doing business in India. Only at the national level...There is much more money to be had....Problem: Incompetent, corrupt leadership....For all the money cricket generates, players are not fairly compensated for that money...
It is a risky investment....Top corporates like Tatas, Birlas, and rich NRI's can invest in teams and privately own them according to rules presented by the BCCI....But the BCCI would make money regardless of who the private owners are.
Secondly, the majority of players are not necessarily fat but they are not in peak physical condition and not playing to the top of their genetic potential.
Until that happens, India will never be consistently number one.
The coach can have all of the best intentions, but if the players cannot execute, then it is all for nothing.
