The 2020 saga has been flogged to death by all and sundry. I say this with trepidation and my mates at work will know exactly what i am talking about!!! (wink, wink!)
Nevertheless, just another angle to the circus which i havent read about yet. Why havent other popular sports morphed? Why not a football match of 20 minutes? Or maybe baseball with only two bases? Hockey, rugby, basketball have all retained their original format. SOme may have experimented with formats but no other game has three world champions. Cricket qualifies and how! Australia for Test cricket and One dayers and of course India for the 2020 series.
Imagine playing tennis with smaller courts and having world championships in that too. Hell, why not a separate grand slam series. Who knows we might just get a winner from India there what with all the jostling for space that we do here all the time. Would Federer and Nadal be champions still? WHo knows. Maybe Leader Paes could find it to be his true calling and finally make his mark in singles tennis.
Imagine the Brazilians playing 20 minutes of football at the World Cup. Actually, there may be some merit in this as it might lead to more goals being scored. Something like the ever rising run rate in cricket attributed to the shorter version of the game. Surely, the Europeans and the Latin Americans would take to this format. In fact, it might just throw up some new stars as well. Dont forget Gony, Asnodkar and Yusuf Pathan!!
What about baseball? Why the agony of nine innings? For new generation purists like us, what with the exposure to 2020 cricket, nine innings are eight too many! Why not one innings! But what the hell, the US dont have a BCCI. And they dont have Pawar and Modi!
And i am sure that the shorter version of hockey will be just what the doctor ordered for the beleagured Indian Hockey Federation. 10 minutes a half. We can do away with all the stamina training and concentrate on what we are known for worldwide - skill! Then we can get back to our winning ways again. And to hell with Gill and gang.
Actually, we should scale this to the next level and ask SRK and Preity to buy some other sports team. Maybe they could work some magic with Mohan Bagan if the players have to play only 20 minutes. It might just be possible that we have a parallel league in India to rival the European one. Thats a challenge for the mighty Khan!
Hmmm... all this gives me more ideas. More next time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Nicely written DJ.
The way I see it... The reason Cricket had a greater chance of inventing the one dayer was because of the pain associated with the long drawn test. Ditto with the T20. Fortunately, Football, Hockey etc last only @ 1.5 hrs even now and hence chances of them reducing duration is not likely. Speed chess on the other hand, is another example of setting rules to reduce the total duration as they figured that the game was not gaining as a spectator sport
Post a Comment