Sunday, June 29, 2008

An unimpressive Asia Cup

Asia-cup has been something less than a disaster to the ODI cricket, whose audiences have been hit hard by the T20 cricket. Putting aside the T20 factor Asia-Cup has been wrongly timed, with Pakistan in a great political crisis and the people looking for some peace and stability in the government have definitely kept away from the matches, It has definitely kept foreign audiences away from the match. There is not even a single Indian flag among the audiences , there has been pin drop silence during India triump and the audiences faded away fast as India closed on to the victory briskly.
Not just that the players are feeling the pinch and have been voicing their views of being over worked(played), They must be really pitied for playing in such sultry conditions and worst being playing back to back matches. It has been cruel from the schedulers to put back to back matches,for India they play Pakisthan and Srilanka back to back. Can it get worse than this? .. never.
The planning of the tournament has been such a bad planning , it is certain that all teams are not given equal weightage to qualify for the final. Group stages disadvantage for India and Pakisthan over srilanka was o.k, since the minnows were odd in number, pakistan or India could be troubled with one upset from a minnow, while srilanka to be knocked needed two to get into trouble. The worst part comes when they have put the points from group stages to carry on to the super-fours, this is gifting srilanka almost a bearth in the final. Srilanka faces Bangladesh twice for their points while pakistan or India got to play against each other twice for their points. Why do they really have to do this, they could have well avoided these double clashes and gave players some breathing, or if they wanted to see to it that there were maximum number of India-Pakistan matches( stadiums have more attendance) then they could have said to keep the things simple and fair the points shall not carry.
This exposes the immaturity of the ACA( Asia Cricket Association) and what was BCCI doing when all this planning was done. Its time for BCCI to step up and deal with other boards with some authority, people are gonna listen... coz u have the money .. u have the fans like nowhere else... and most importantly ur team is performing well.
Indian cricketers are really being over worked, they play 150% more ODI's than many other cricketing nations.

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