I was born and brought up in a small city where the general masses like any other Indian City, Metro or Village were crazy and passionate about Cricket. Till date the City does not boast of a player representing a Ranji Team forget National Team representation. Still the general public is as good a expert critic of state of Indian Cricket as anywhere else.
You must agree that there are crores of Indian Cricket Followers who spend their precious time, money on following our National Team. There are young students who instead of concentrating on their education and exams spend time watching cricket considering the time can be very crucial to future of their lives for e.g. their Board Exam. I will quote my own example when during my 10th Class Boards in 1987, the Indo Pak Cricket Series was happening in parallel and it really affected my results. Whatever happened I am still a crazy and passionate fan of Cricket.
Coming to the serious question "What has cricket done to the general public of India in terms of changing our lives despite our craze for it?” At most the effect is "If We Win we are happy for couple of days but then life is back to normal or if we loose we are upset for couple of days discuss this over lunch, coffee, free time and then go back to our Normal Lives".
What has cricket or the relevant decision makers done to improve employment, divide its ever growing revenues to its religious followers? How many people in India owe their livelihood to Cricket? Out of Hundred of Thousands of our growing population spending time learning and following cricket only 15-20 of them at any moment can depend on cricket for their livelihood plus there are others like Media Personals, Grounds Men etc. 99.9% of the mass only pay for it and never gets anything in return and considering our recent dismal performances recently even the emotional happiness is not coming our way.
We spend hours on television first watching cricket and then analyzing cricket on different forums. Surprisingly all the discussions are carbon copy of each other, no body wants to look at the bigger picture. What is the solution to the situation we are in today? I would like to take few examples from different sports how they are managed by different sporting bodies and how it has helped them promoting the cause of that sport with the inevitable result of better performances on the field and off the field in terms of generating more revenues, jobs while maintaining the same passion and craziness.
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