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.

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.

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.

I disagree. Initially players and fans were skeptical and didn't treat T20 too seriously. However opinions changed and these days most players and fans take it very seriously. T20 is without doubt the fastest and most entertaining format, recently there has been a lot of talk about what can be done to save ODIs from dieing. Here in New Zealand T20 has a huge tv audience and pulls great crowd attendances while ODI support has continued to dwindle. Has this not been the case in every country? perhaps with the exception of England.

I've attended a few T20 IPL games past year while being in India .. it's anything but boring and slow... the atmosphere certainly beats some of the sports events I've been to around here (including games at Fenway park where for some reason most people just come in to drink and make merry and not give a crap to what's going on field until the very last inning or so) ..

Well I was merely alluding to the ICC trying to expand the sport beyond the 10 test playing nations. I think the BCCI (arguably the richest sporting organisation in the world) and India with its billion + population and 400 million + viewers have been driving the sport forward in a large way. I doubt if cricket would ever become more popular than rugby in NZ or football in England.

I recall a recent proposal about having ODI's played in the late afternoon and into the night to increase interest. I personally think its a good idea because even though I'm quite a fan of the Black Caps, morning just isn't the time to start a game.

Also for those wondering ODI stands for One Day International.

Cricket already has a wider audience than most people realise, Its the second most popular team sport in the world (behind Football/Soccer).

Here's what you need to know about India and Athletics:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/spo_sum_oly_med_all_tim_pe...

Here's what you need to know about Cricket: Sleeping pills are cheaper, pleasanter, and won't bore others.

How is "medals per capita" a useful metric? A 10x bigger country isn't entitled to send 10x as many athletes, and it's probably impossible to field a team that's 10x as likely to win as the average national Olympic team. Also, that measure puts Saint Kitts and Nevis at #7 in the world for having won a single gold medal—ever.

I can argue to the same effect that Baseball is equally, if not more, boring .. however, nice bit of research there for us on the advantages of sleeping pills over cricket.

and as far as the medals go, we're atleast not last ;)

(of course, the downvotes are for your grammar. It should be "more pleasant")

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.

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.

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.

- It is a competition between people that are not equal in resources (some have XP guns, some have unfair guns like m32) and skills.

- 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.

- Whatever you do, there are always better players then you, but if you are persistent you can achieve some success.

What does it mean that I discarded Combat Arms once I tried out Modern Warfare 2? If I were to take a stab at this analogy, I would suggest that better businessmen change the nature of the game in order to achieve greater success or break new ground.

But maybe there is something different going on here. CA is free to play while MW2 costs $60 for the game and $300 for a system; we learn from this that you will find less shady people in the system when the system comes with a price tag.

It's a bit early to tell, isn't it?

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!

In the 19'th century, people would follow a test match by newspaper.

TMS is barely comparable to any other radio sports broadcasting. It's an event in of itself.

Just curious. Where are you from?

Scotland, where cricket is a strange and foreign game ;-)