What is common between the number of languages spoken, India's population and the number of Gods in it's pantheon..it's the common answer would be the sheer size. number and complexity involved. That brings us to India's favorite game and that is an absolute no-brainer. It's cricket, cricket and cricket !!
Look at it closely. Cricket is simply humongous, see the size of the ground (@17000 sq mtrs , a football ground would be 7500 sq mtr & an Olympic 6980 sq mtrs), the overall spectator count would be highest (simply because it's a 3 hour, 8 hour or 40 hour game), the sheer scale of the statistics involved (every ball bowled, every run scored, every wicket) can yield data & analysis in a 1000 ways !!,
Now let's come to the complexity of outcomes. There used to be just 3 results in Test cricket, a win, loss or draw (very rarely a tie). With the advent of the one-day & T-20, a tie became one of the real possibilities. Rain interrupted games resulted in a new Duckworth & Lewis rule and now the super over for determining results.
Earlier, there used to be two umpires but now there is a third umpire backed by an entire range of Ball-tracker, Snick-O meter and slow mo close-ups. The boundary ropes is an entirely new area up for scrutiny with over-stepping together with power-plays and restriction on fielders within the circle.
How a bowler bowls a no ball (over-stepping, short-pitched, wide, height issues), how a batsman gets out (caught, bowled, stumped, lbw, run-out, timed out, hit-wicket, mankaded-out, simply straying from the crease) seems to increase exponentially with technology.
No one talks about an official 20 minute soccer game or 5 man a side game. Tennis, hockey, base-ball, yes rules have changed every where due to technology and it's implication on human decision making but no where does the core of a game get re-invented like in a game of cricket.
Let's get back to the theme of India's fascination for the scale of this spectacle, the participation of scientists, maths wizards, statisticians, fortune-tellers, weather pundits, pure interpreters, jingoistic cheer leaders and the demands of million or tens of crores strong fan-base from their demi-gods on the field!!!
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