Saturday, 28 January 2006

Richard Boock on Chris Cairns - again

Hasn't Richard already written his piece on Chris Cairns? Well, yes - but he wants to correct some of the "errors" made by other commentators (such as Chris Rattue) so has written another. Richard gets especially touchy over the comment that cricket is only a "very small international sport":

I can only assume that this was a leg-pull, or that someone had forgotten to factor in the 1.5 billion sub-continental Asians who consider the game their religion.

Outside soccer or basketball, cricket would be among the most international of team sports; far bigger, wealthier, and involving more participants than rugby, league, Aussie rules and American football put together.


Richard might be exaggerating slightly, but he is absolutely right to pour scorn onto any rugby-head who dares to suggest that cricket is a "very small" game.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think he's exaggerating actually. In terms of sheer numbers of people watching and playing the game, cricket falls behind only soccer and (possibly) basketball. The prominence of the game has traditionally been limited by the fact that India is a very poor country. This is changing, however, and I think we can only expect cricket's international profile to grow spectacularly over the coming decades.