Skip to main content

Evolution of Cricket. Will Cricket Attract More Fans in the Future ?


Cricket has attracted more fans. Evolution of Cricket.
Evolution of Cricket in the 20th Century

The global governing body for cricket is the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was started in 1909 and started governing the game of Cricket from then.

When the game of Cricket started at the International level there was only unlimited overs format played and only a few matches in a year. A team will play only five matches per year on an average. Then, as years went on Limited overs format was introduced and it was played for 60 overs a side, with teams wearing a white jersey. It was at this time Cricket started attracting more fans. Then ICC decided to start conducting the World Cup, which is a tournament that will be held every 4 years. The first season of the World cup was played in 1975. As years went on and with the world cup happening every four years, people started watching cricket in large numbers.

ICC decided to further increase its audience and started to introduce colored jersey for teams. Colored jersey was worn by the international teams from the 1980s. But, it was only in the 1992 World Cup, all the participated teams wore the colored jersey.

Introduction of T20 Format
From 2000 all teams accepted to wear the colored jersey for all Limited overs matches. For, test cricket the ICC decided to follow the traditional white kits, and even now white kits are being worn in Test Cricket.

It was only in the 21st century, Cricket attracted a major portion of its fan base by introducing the Twenty-Twenty Format, where twenty overs will be played by each side. In 2007, the first World t20 tournament was held and from then its popularity started growing at a faster pace than before. Since this was a shorter format of the game, the teams reduced playing defensive Cricket shots and started playing attacking shots to score a massive total. Fans, who even didn't watch cricket started watching Cricket in large numbers.

The ICC decided to organize the World T20 tournament every two years and this is till now the second biggest event of Cricket, after the 50 - over World Cup.

Domestic T20 Leagues

Though Cricket attracted more fans after the introduction of the twenty-twenty format, a major reason of it to attract more than 2.5 billion fans worldwide is due to the introduction of the Domestic T20 Leagues in many nations. This attracted more fans as teams played with city names. People from that territory and nearby regions started supporting their team. Since, there were teams in the tournament all the major city names were chosen which attracted fans from almost the entire nation.

Indian Premier League

The Indian Premier League (IPL) was started in 2008 by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). IPL is also considered as the most successful Twenty-Twenty league in the world. It is among the top ten leagues in the world with more fans and attracting an average attendance of more than 50,000 fans per match. The players are chosen by conducting an auction, which occurs four months before the start of the IPL every year.

Players from around the world show interest in playing in this league. A total of 1112 players registered their names in the 2018 auction of the league. The reason for so many players registering for an auction is that no other league/national duty pays anywhere close to the IPL. For most players, money from the 7 weeks of IPL is more than their national team salary from the remaining 10 months.

The reason for paying the players high is because of the population of India. India is the second-most populous nation in the world, where over 800 million people watch the Indian Premier League. Because of this vast fan population, the Indian Premier League is getting profit even from the first season of the League till now. The Indian government also benefits from IPL as it earns a revenue of around USD 46,230,000 for the conduction of IPL from the BCCI.
T10 league

The T10 league was introduced in 2017 in the United Arab Emirates, in which each side plays ten overs each. The league was launched to attract fans in the United Arab Emirates, As a surprise, the league also attracted fans from around the world. This league was introduced for making the game of Cricket more enjoyable by restricting the use of defensive shots and start playing attacking shots almost every ball a batsmen faces.

A target of more than 100 runs is posted by the batting team in most of the T10matches. This is an emerging league in today's world, but it is till now unable to attract fans like the IPL, as the population of the people watching Cricket in the United Arab Emirates is very much less than that in India.

Future of the Game

The future of Cricket looks somewhat similar to Football, as the game is sliding towards the club culture with more number of nations expected to get engaged because of the Twenty20 format. My expectation is that because of its developing club culture the game will see an exponential increase in the number of fans in the coming years.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Korean War | change in position of the 38th parallel

Korean War history and the 38th parallel North Korea is an isolated nation that proclaims its southern neighbor South Korea as its enemy. North Korea blew up its joint liaison office with South Korea on 16 June 2020, in a dramatic and carefully planned display of rancor toward its southern neighbor. Till the end of the Second World War, there was no separate North and South Korea and they were collectively called Korea. In this article, we will see what led to the separation of Korea and the Korean War, which was fought after the separation in detail. Korean war led to the split of North and South Korea Separation of Korea At the end of the Second World War, Korea — which had formerly been occupied by the Japanese — was divided along the 38th Parallel (38 degrees North) by the United States (US) military planners Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, as a temporary division of the country. But the onset of the Cold War (rivalry that developed after World War II between the US and the Soviet
17 comments
Read more

Maximum time difference on Earth - 26 hours

maximum time difference Earth's largest time difference: Time Zone may be used to refer to the local time of a country or a region. Time zones in the world are obtained from the UTC. If each time zone were 1 hour apart, there would be 24 time zones in the world. The clocks throughout the World are not adjusted for Daylight savings as all are under the regulation of a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  UTC is 0 hours which means any area on the Earth can only be ahead (+) or behind (-) the UTC. We know that there are 24 hours in a day, so we may think that the biggest time difference between two points on the earth would only be 24 hours. But, according to the standard time (UTC) which we follow, the biggest time difference is 26 hours. The reason behind this is because of the man-made imaginary International Date Line (IDL) which was agreed in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference (IMC). The IDL serves as the "line of demarcation" between two consecutive calendar
4 comments
Read more

Penguins contribute to Climate Change

Penguins contribute to climate change The Earth’s average temperature has been keeping on increasing at a rapid pace over the past few decades. A major problem that contributes to the increase in global temperature is the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected into space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by the greenhouse gases. The absorbed energy warms the atmosphere and therefore the surface of the world. This process maintains the Earth’s temperature at around 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it might rather be, allowing life on Earth to exist. Climate forcing is the change in the balance between radiation coming into the atmosphere and radiation going out. A positive radiative forcing tends on the average to warm the surface of the world, and negative forcing tends on the average to chill the surface. Likely, human activities such as burning fossil fuels, agriculture, and land clearing are
4 comments
Read more