Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Emphatic Victory - Empty Stands - Worrying Trend

First up congratulations to Dhoni and Team India on the brilliant victory against the world champ Aussies. The whole five days were dominated by the Indian's and never let the Aussies to come back into the game. Dhoni the most successful and to an extend lucky captain in the recent times was adjudged Man of the Match ahead of some brilliant performances from Gambhir,Mishra,Zaheer,Ishant,Ganguly,Harbhajan and the champ Sachin. After long long time we could see a collective effort from the team translating to a brilliant win. Aussies were not in their element and gave too many quick runs in both the innings and their bowling looked very ordinary. Ponting mentioned that the Indian seamers were performing far better than the Aussies in the series. Also their main stay Hayden and Clark are not in form and that shows in their performance, apart from this they seem to be missing the services of McGrath,Warne and Gilli very much. Lets hope Aussies put up a good show in the coming two tests.


My fears on stadiums going empty for Test Series even in India has come true with the Mohali Test. Its worrying to see the empty stands played between equals (India vs Australia :) ), we have been watching some very interesting 3 days and in fact India has been dominating all the 3 days but still there is no crowd to watch the game. The same thing happened in WestIndies when took on the Aussies last summer and i feared that the same could happen in India with the advent of the slam bang IPL (emptystands)and it has happened.


Mohali crowd is respected for being very knowledgeable on the game and come in scores to watch good contests, the Punjab Cricket Association did its best by letting in school students free but that was not enough. The most troubling fact is even on the week-ends we don't see the crowds, even though India was not batting India was dominating the match and it was the most exiting 2& 3rd day in the very important series.

Team India's international commitment is already full and with the advent of IPL and ICL the Indian public is already provided with too much of cricket entertainment. Test cricket which is like the true cricket and the purists cricket with its nature of slow run scoring and battle of mental strength is not liked by the crowds after the slam bang version T20 made its way into the living rooms of millions of homes all around the world. Its time cricket administrators all over the world take note of this depressing trend and do something to preserve the Test Cricket.

5 comments:

Nishanth said...

Jus after i finished posting bout this win in my blog,google bought up your post.
Eventhough i cudnt watch the match becoz of work ,..m greatly overjoyed by team india's performance.But we rather not make a mountain out of a mole-hill,.. :P

cheers

abimanyu said...

Its really heartening to see such an all-round performance from Team India. They have really made the Aussies to dance to their tunes for the past 5 days. This is the best bowling performance I have seen from the Indian side in a long long time. They just seem to have everything in it to torment the deep Australian batting line up.

Hope India wraps up the series in style.

Shankar.Nash said...

Yes vasu.. its long since indians performed so collectively. Except Dravid, everybody has something that cannot be over-looked in this test. The good time of Dhoni continues.. though we should not forget that the fortune favours the brave. Hope, he continues like this on the long run too.

The aussies, are clearly missing the services of McGrath. Their bowling just cannot sustain the pressure after a couple of quick wickets and they let the momentum slip. But, in the batting dept. i am sure that everything will change, if the big man Hayden gets a good game. Once the early wicket is prevented, i am sure they have the technique to pile up a huge score. Hoping that doesnt happen in the next two tests :)

Gajendra said...

May be the Crackers Festival in Mohali didn't let aussies to concentrate or get back into the game.I am expecting ground full crowds in the next match.Good days for Cricket in India

Vasu said...

Hi Nishanth welcome to my blog. Agreed that team india needs to do this consistently to claim that we are challenging the World Champs.

Hi All

We are in an interesting phase where the seniors are forced to perform and prove their worth. Lets see how our dynamic Srikkanth handles the selection for the next test with kumble available for selection ??