Is the Game of Cricket a Model for Surviving the 21st Century?

People ask me how I go through the pain of watching Test cricket. My answer to them has always been "You don't get the point, do you?". People just don't understand how beautiful some things are. Some tastes are acquired. I understand that T20 gives instant gratification and I don't escape the lure of it. For me, T20 is like a one night stand and Tests are like long-term relations. I did not want to hurt all the T20 fans by comparing them with masturbation and making-love.<p>I feel that there is no relativity in good taste. I listen to Vivaldi, my friend listens to Bryan Adams and my younger brother listens to Justin Bieber.

One of the problems with T20 though is that you see a very different game than in longer forms. The same contest between bat and ball isn't there, there is no real reason to play defensively and even good balls will get hit out of luck because the batsman is swinging at everything.<p>This is still a big problem in cricket, the old fans like seeing a draw out contest which shows all the skills of cricket, although in order to interest younger and new crowds T20 is the way to go.

The advances in the sport have been tremendous. But all of those advances were made for a reason, to package the sport better and reach a wider audience. Unfortunately, thats where cricket has not progressed. A handful of countries take the sport seriously and even from those, the sport is extremely popular (a religion in some) in the Indian sub-continent.

The diversification of the game in terms of different formats have offered different sections of demographics (most on the basis of age) a nice way to admire and enjoy the game.<p>It has also adopted from corporates and other sports the ways to popularize and distribute the game. Indian Premier League is a fantastic example of how the authorities adopted the proven model of English Premier League football (soccer) and took the game of cricket to the new level of entertainment.<p>There have been concerns raised by people about dilution of glory of good and old cricket by the introduction of new formats. I disagree with that. Here measure-the-response is at play. Most of the Test matches (5 day format) is witnessed by crowds as low as 10% of total seating capacity of stadia. And as the younger generations are coming into mainstream of consumers, it was highly pertinent to introduce something that they can identify with.

I found myself that playing Combat Arms is a model of doing business in the real word.<p>- It is a competition between people that are not equal in resources (some have XP guns, some have unfair guns like m32) and skills.<p>- There are always people that will cheat and the authority (CA) can't stop them (after each fix they appear 2-3h again). So, just be calm and avoid combat with people that probably cheat.<p>- Whatever you do, there are always better players then you, but if you are persistent you can achieve some success.

It's a bit early to tell, isn't it?<p>In 1910 you could have written: Is the Austro-Hungarian Empire a model for surviving the 20th century?

What is really weird about cricket is the number of people who prefer to listen to it on the radio rather than watching it on TV!