Quotehanger

  • "The fact is that once I was playing again I was automatically available for everything on the schedule and that meant Stanford. I make no apologies for that and, as for the suggestion that I should waive the fee or give it to charity, I don't see why I should be a special case."
    Steve Harmison feels strongly about suggestions that he came out of one-day retirement in order to play the Stanford Twenty20 for 20

    Sep 7, 2008

    • Recent Posts

    Try DVD rental for £3.99 per month!

    The headlines

    The news

    TWC


    Articles tagged as: cricinfo-blogs

    Cricket’s status and popularity in India

    By Will 2 years ago, at the start of March, 7 Comments »

    After the Ashes, cricket’s stock rose significantly in England. But even in September 2005, with most of the country drunk on Ashes fever - literally, in some cases - it probably only matched India’s insatiable appetite for the game.

    This remarkable fact has been highlighted by Paul Coupar, who’s out there for The Wisden Cricketer and is kindly blogging for Cricinfo too. It makes quite startling reading:

    And that appetite for cricket has not changed if Nagpur’s local Sunday paper, The Hitavada, is anything to go by. In a 16-page paper, there are 15 cricket pieces. Remarkably, one of them is headlined ‘Chappell has acknowledged receipt of email’. Over on the front page, the three lead stories are: ‘England Cook up a defiant story’, ‘Keep restraint, Pawar tells Chappell in surprise meet’ and, finally, the tiddling matter of President Bush snubbing a proposed nuclear deal with Pakistan.

    I agree with Paul that the appetite for cricket has, in recent times, been somewhat gluttonous; Chappell-Ganguly-gate was unnecessarily long-winded, but it nevertheless demonstrates the unparalleled lust for cricket. Is there any other sport which binds a country’s people together as much as cricket does for India?

    7 Comments »