What is Cricket's Alternative?

Well it was almost during this time last year i got an hang of NBA Championship (Basket Ball Championship) when i was @ Dallas, TX. As i might have mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, three things i caught up with, during my last visit were AMERICAN IDOL, AMERICA's Next Top Model and the great NBA Championship (Basket Ball Championship). For some reasons i did hate to watch any of the programmes on the US Television earlier to witnessing the above programmes.

Since my colleagues @ Dallas were visiting us (me and an another friend) to watch NBA games at our place, i started following the same. Very soon, not only i started enjoying the game, use to cheer for Mavericks. The Key players for Mavericks were Nowitzki, Jerry Stackhouse, Josh Howard and the names were as familiar as Sachin, Saurav and Dravid. Nowitzki was like Dhoni who single handedly made Mavericks to win several games. His Three-pointers were like Dhonis Sixes which use to accelerate the score board as well as the excitement. Thus started my love for American Television Programmes - First one being NBA!

A brief about the game could be found here. Usually the matches are of 7 games. Each team is a host for the alternate games. So if MIAMI Heat is playing against DALLAS Mavericks, the matches are played alternatively @ MIAMI and Dallas, giving the Home Crowd Advantage for the Host Side. The way the teams are introduced with lot of lights, music and dancing is fun to watch. I think lately am witnessing gals dancing for 4s, 6s or a wicket in one-day cricket matches. This concept, is pretty easy to guess that it has been copied from Basket Ball. I found BasketBall was more fun, fast with lot of excitement. Being a die-hard cricket fan, it was difficult to digest the fact, that i started finding one-day cricket a boring game, lately. Especially after India failed miserably @ the World CUP. Maybe 20-20 is an answer to that sort of fun. Whoever wins 4 games first, is the winner, unlike our ODI series, where the teams play, even if one team has washed the other 6-0.

Coming to Cricket, earlier i held pride in being a Cricket Fan, for the only reason that - the Nation is UNITED atleast for this purpose. As you mature and start work, spending whole day glued to the TV, or Cricinfo.com is Foolishness. This way one is Inefficient @ Work and Not giving enough Time to Spouse, Family or Friends in their Personal Life is . What makes things worse is the fact that our players showing miserable performance @ the Greatest Cricket Event - the World CUP, disrespecting the entire Fan Following. Anyways there can never be a Alternative as the Madness of Cricket is hard to take out.

Just to list some games, I found

1. KABADDI - [Plz Dont laugh] - an interesting alternative for the reasons it doesnt kill time like Cricket, Players might not play for statistics, atleast there might not be sponsorors queing up and giving huge endorsements to these players, and one cannot spend lot of time in the kabbadi court saying Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabbadi without getting tired (we can imagine how it would be if Saurav does this). As our script writers are lacking innovation i would give one idea "Enuff Cricket, Let's Do Kabaddi" which can be a hit considering the fact that there is a huge let down on Cricket. Indeed the very Cricket Sponsorors should sponsor such kind of Movie Making.


2. HOCKEY - Does any one remember that once upon a time we use to be the leaders in this game. Thanks to (un) gentleman Gill, whose focus is butts than sticks, amidst administering the game.


3. GILLI Dhanda - One needs to professionalise this game


4. LAGORI - I guess this closely resembles Base Ball


5. KHO-KHO - Yuvraj can do a good job, we can recruit Jonty as a Coach for this