Circa 2010: The young boys play 20-20 cricket (even retire from the test format for it), earns million of dollars in endorsements of products ranging from colas to innerwears, parties late nights with booze and babes before matches, hires PR agencies to handle media relations, occasionally makes presence at TV shows, Movies, participates in Reality shows during off-season (read:after being dropped).
Cricket has evolved to be an Multi-Billion Dollar Industry from an International Sport. Money, has been the sole driver for cricket for quite some years now. No wonder the highly profitable ICC is not so keen to promote the game to non-playing yet high potential regions like America, China, South East Asia and in Europe. The recent controversies in IPL, spot fixing allegations against Pakistani Players are only evidences supporting the popular belief that Cricket is now more a business of money than a sport. There was a time when I used to get score updates from my school peon who had no better job than listening to running commentary in All India Radio. Now score updates are available on Internet, FM Radio, SMS, even GPRS. Yet my interest towards the game never compels me to check scores as frequently as before. The love is dying with every test/ one day series with Sri Lanka withing few months, with yet another T20 series, with every scandals, with the over-occupied cricket calendar. I still hope, that the good old days will be back, that I will look forward to the next cricket match and that I will be back asking the stranger sitting besides me in the bus, struggling in the crowd to catch a glimpse of matches standing outside TV showrooms and ask the most FAQ in India, "Arre, score kya hua hai?"
