One of the things I love about the IPL is that I can see someone like Graeme Smith play alongside Shane Warne, as well as seeing the opening pair of Sachin and Sanath with Duminy one down. That's all good for me. There's also the chance of seeing Warne vs Tendulkar once again, and seeing Kallis vs Steyn on the big stage. I want to see Warne vs Tendulkar. I don't want to see Warne vs Saurabh Tiwary. All these domestic players who never have a chance of playing International Cricket, sort of ruin it for me. With every side needing a minimum of seven Indian player's, you always have two or three players who are never going to play at International Level, and they are a buzz kill really, because it mean's some very good players can't play because of them. Remove the limit of International Players. I mean seriously... seeing players like McGrath and Vettori sitting on the sidelines, while some of those domestic players are in the playing XI is sort of a disgrace. The best XI for each team should be playing. Not just the best seven or eight, with three random players filling up the spots.
Well, given that it's an Indian competition with franchises owned by Indian businesses and the moral justification for the tournament was to unearth Indian talent that wouldn't otherwise get an opportunity to perform with a global spotlight, I think what you're asking for is a little harsh. While there are plenty of crap cricketers who are getting a chance, it has also allowed us to observe some cricketers who wouldn't have otherwise gotten a chance to show their talents on the international stage until they earned an international cap--Manish Pandey, for instance.
sohum added 2 Minutes and 21 Seconds later...
"Spider cam" is nothing new. They have had that in the NFL and college football for years. Interested in the 3d aspect though, it also means lots more commercials though. Maybe now a 30 minute break at the 10 over mark and probably not far from CGI ads on the pitch
Consider the fact that it is much harder to implement spider cam in an oval-shaped field that has a pretty large diameter. In football you can pretty much run any and all types of cameras from the sidelines just by giving them enough height. I can't see a camera extending from the boundary line far enough to make spider cam useful... maybe only for the boundary runners or something.
sohum added 9 Minutes and 45 Seconds later...
It won't and that's my problem. I want to see better and more quality Cricket. Watching in 3D is great and all, but if the Cricket is still lackluster then what's the point. A lot of people will still watch on regular television sets, and only a very small amount will actually go to watch in 3D. Modi is trying to please the minority, and ignoring the wants of the majority.
Hold on, here, what makes you think the majority of the people want to see all domestic cricketers out of the competition. I, for one, would prefer them to still be in there.
Besides, your whole theory that just putting more international cricketers in will automatically improve the quality is not necessarily true. Mediocre cricketers can play quality cricket. Quality cricketers can play mediocre cricket. Sure, on average we would see better cricket, but at the cost of losing the initial reason behind the tournament.
He's innovating it by doing it in 3D, which is fine, but like i said, he's still trying to please the minority of the people, and in the long term, that's not a plan that will succeed. Those tickets will be expensive, and who will find the time to go, with work and other life related things going on, because these matches take place on weekdays as well.
Actually, I think it is potentially a plan that will succeed. If people have time to go to full days of Test matches, why would they not shell out some cash to go watch the game in an air-conditioned theater for the duration of a long-ish Bollywood movie? I think your analysis is wrong.
And it could potentially succeed--only in T20 cricket, though, because that's where the big money is coming in. The BCCI could potentially implement this for every international T20 that is played in India. We'd be seeing higher revenues since there'd be revenues coming in from ticket sales as well as theater sales. The only thing that would go down is the cost of the rights to broadcast the game on normal networks, but if the BCCI worked something out to provide a separate 3D feed, that loss would be recovered as well.
As for the Youtube thing. All he's really doing is legalizing something, which has been going on illegally for a while really. In fact, it isn't even the first time it's happened. You can watch Cricket on your computer Live both Legally, and illegally. Even Cricinfo shows Live Cricket to the US sometimes. So he's just sort of doing something that's already been done, on a larger scale with Youtube, and he will obviously get undeserved recognition for it, but whatever.
First of all, YouTube doesn't normally stream any live content. The majority (and possibly all) of the content on YouTube is pre-recorded, uploaded stuff. So streaming cricket on YT would be a step in a different direction. That said, streaming cricket online is nothing new. I would be looking out for content delivered in HD quality (that isn't the case for Willow.TV or any illegal stream) and expanding the viewership base in NA as being the two primarily goals for the Google partnership.
Don't expect to find anything though.
