Dennett’s Daily Cricket World Cup – India vs Pakistan

The India versus Pakistan game was an absoute triumph for the world cup and for sport in general. A massive crowd, Indians and Pakistanis and a few Aussies enjoying top class sport in an atmosphere of good-humoured friendly rivalry.

As a good friend of mine said it reminded him of what one day cricket used to be like in this country when games seemed to matter. Every ball was worth watching.

From an Australian point-of-view the only sour note is that the game was not shown on network television. Channel 9 are only showing Aussie games – this one was only available on pay tv. As a result, the audience was probably about a million people lower than it might have been and many Aussies outside adelaide were unaware the match was even on.

And Sydneysiders who picked up today’s paper would have been none the wiser. The Daily Telegraph sport begins with page after page of rugby league, then when it gets to cricket it’s all about the Aussie team before just one little article about yesteday’s big game and then it’s on to other sports.

I thnk this is sad. This was one of the most-watched sporting events of all time – even if the claimed figure of 1.2 billion seems a little fanciful. The people of Adelaide embraced it – the Australian mainstream media should have too.

One Aussie who did take notice was Dean Jones, who tweeted:

--Deano tweet—

Thanks Deano – very helpful to compare the rivalry of the 1.6 billion Pakistanis and Indians with 2 small suburbs of Melbourne.

So big was the event that even the Washington Post featued a detailed preview of it. However, it hasn’t quite managed to make it to famous American sports show Pardon the Interruption – unlike the 2011 semi:

--PTI Clip—

4 quick points to finish:

1. Pakistani fans should of course not be too despondent – these preliminary games are of course essentially meaningless as far as progression in the tournament goes.

2. What is doing with the crowd. It was sold out in 15 minutes but the final crowd figure was only 41,000 – 12,000 less than the Big Bash game from the other week. I’ve yet to here a convincing explanation from anyone.

3. Anyone in doubt about Sachin’s enduring popularity – here’s a tweet he sent out of the people outside his house to celebrate India’s win.

--Sachin tweet—

4. There was another game on yesterday. As expected South Africa beat Zimbabwe but not without a fight. The Zimbabweans must be a big chance of knocking off a favoured team – they beat Sri Lanka in a warmup game, had New Zealand in trouble in another before the rain came and now have performed very creditably against South Africa.

And that was day 2 at the world cup!