The English Summer Strikes Back

[mcgillianaire]

English cricket supporters living in London will be extremely upset this morning. There's barely a cloud in sight and the forecast predicts sunshine all day! I think I'm starting to like the British weather. Just as long as it rains when India is struggling, I'm all for this topsy-turviness. Sunday was absolutely gorgeous, yesterday it was overcast and/or rainy literally the whole day... the sun didn't pop out even once! And today... hah, the English cricket team, undone by their own weather. You'd think after all these years, they'd've learned. I only wish I had my Indian cricket jersey with me. It'd've been great to rub it in while going into town, sunglasses, hat et al. :)

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

It'd've been great to rub it in while going into town
How much do people in London actually care about the series? You're clearly in a better position to judge than I am, but barring Australia's last tour, I was under the impression people in England generally didn't care all that much for cricket, a few old folks aside.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

There are two parts to this:

A) Cricket is obviously not as popular as Football, but I don't have the numbers to prove your impression wrong. Off hand though, I'd say your impression is quite off, in the strict sense of, "a few old folks". Let me put it this way: A lot of youngsters follow cricket, but substantially more youngsters follow football. Few others sports compete with cricket for popularity stakes, esp. amongst youth. The only ones I can think of are Rugby and F1, followed by Tennis & Golf. Cricket is not a national obsession, the way it is in India; then again, cricket enjoys a monopoly in India, which not even football does in England. It's the single-most popular sport no doubt, but if one were to construct a parliament of sporting popularity with each sport representing parties, I'd say it'd be a hung parliament with football the single-largest party, close to an absolute majority, but not quite there. Cricket would be the next biggest 'party', followed by the four sports I mentioned above. I hope that answers yours question somewhat.

I did consider using the argument that cricket is the 2nd most widely covered sport in England, but that is obviously misleading for various reasons, some of which include:

a) Cricket & Football are played in different times of the year, and never together, except at the very end of the football season, and the beginning of the subsequent season.

b) Cricket is played all week, especially at the County & National level, whereas football is a weekly event, besides the odd midweek fixture.

c) There is a definite difference in the space devoted to cricket in the broadsheets+DailyMail and the rest of the tabloids. Tabloids sell more copies than the broadsheets, but the broadsheets use up the same, if not more space during the summer to cover cricket than they do to cover Football once its season begins. (part of this is due to (b) described above). As for the TV media, they tend to cover both sports in relatively equal detail in comparison with the discrepencies with the written media. This may also have to do with the fact that there are no distinct "broadsheet-style" and "tabloid-style" tv channels. Etc, etc.

The problem with cricket's popularity is that more and more youngsters are sticking to football, than in the past. I wouldn't say that youth altogether have given up on the sport. There's still a strong contingent of youth who love their cricket. I mean, even at the Lord's Test, there was one particular stand that became notorious for being filled only with kids, who were there thanks to summer holidays.

Oh, and another thing. Take the area I'm living in for instance. There are at least 7 cricket clubs within a 3-4 mile radius of my place, and each of these clubs have 4 separate XIs competing in the local leagues. Most, if not all, of these clubs have a youth XI. Above them is the County youth teams, and the county 2nd XIs. Above them is the first XIs of the 18 counties. And above that, the national team of course. Multiply that across the country. Even if the elderly population is increasing and perhaps distorting the demographics of the argument in this point, it should still be obvious that cricket is a very popular game in this country.

Now, onto the next part:

B) I don't think too many people in London care about this series. The BritIndians obviously do, and there are a fair number of them in the city, but among the rest, I'll put it this way: the British cricket fan values the Ashes above all other series, but doesn't necessarily care nothing at all about other series, except perhaps those with Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. It's interesting though because in the last 20 years, England have won the Ashes outright, only once and even then, they were extremely fortunate. It was by no-means a one-sided series, yet their folk look forward to it like no other series. But if they were more interested in actually winning, they'd focus more on series like these with India, where they're practically evenly matched, if not, better off.

=======

There is one sport however that fits your impression to the dot: Bowls. If you ever find a group of English youth playing that, I'll be damned.

Overall, cricket may be losing out to football but can't ignore this:

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

"Twenty20 has been spectacularly successful. In its first year, 2003, the 45 games between the English counties drew an average of more than 5,000 spectators each, dwarfing attendance at other county games. Last year there were 52 matches, and a 12 percent increase in attendance. The first Twenty20 match at the Lord's ground, home of English cricket, pulled in a crowd of 26,500. This coming summer (2005) will see a further expansion, to 79 matches."

Re: Overall, cricket may be losing out to football but can't ignore this:

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

52 games times 1.12 times 5000 spectators is just short of 300,000 for the entire season. If my calculations are correct, total Premier League attendance for 2005-6 season was in the range of 13 million, and I'll bet tickets cost a helluva lot more. So Twenty20 might be expanding, but it's not even close to competing right now.

[mcgillianaire.livejournal.com]

A decent test could be constructed to figure out popularity and knowledge. The people could be asked to name as many players as possible from current and former eras of various sports. As I read somewhere a while ago, it's quite possible that a lot of English youth will not be able to name players beyond Flintoff, Pietersen and Collingwood, if even that, but they'd have no trouble coming up with a squad of 20 for the national football team. Similarly, I'd say the average Englishmen would struggle to name sportsmen in all other sports.