In what follows I shall attempt to justify the title of this review
Now for a soccer fan, soccer is the greatest game, for a rugby player rugby is greatest and for a kabbadi player, kabbadi is next to none. So giving arguments like passion, popularity, aggression, uncertainty wont help to reach a concrete conclusion as to which sport stands out and stands alone. Let’s argue it out on pure reason and like someone who has never played any sport to feel any biased emotions for any game.
Now to me most of the games can basically be divided in two categories. First of the games where a ball or some other object is thrown from one court to another and back again. this category includes table tennis, lawn tennis, badminton, volleyball etc. In second category fall games where one team is given a target or a goal to defend and the other one to attack and the rival team treats these targets the opposite. Football, hockey, basketball etc fall in this category.
Cricket falls in neither category and any game that falls in either of these categories cannot claim to be fundamentally different from other games because conception of all such games is quite easy. If you let the mankind evolve again, similar sports will definitely evolve but not cricket. Of all those that fall in neither categories cricket is the one which puts a range of skills on display. you have bowlers, batsmen and fielders. Among bowlers you have fast bowlers, spinners, medium pace etc. Among spinners you have wrist spinners, finger spinners, chinaman bowlers etc and you can go on branching out like that. I therefore see no other game as sophisticated as cricket.