Sports and Sponsorship

This morning I was listening to BBC world and guess what ? Two of my most favorite sports were being featured - Cricket and American Football. Hearing about cricket in USA was muchly cool !!!!

There was a time (until Sachin beat Desmond Haynes' record for the highest number of test centuries) when I could recollect at length the way every ball was bowled, the way it was hit by every Indian batsman, any incidents of spectacular fielding - you name it and I could be the talking parrot. So much that midterm exams were of no importance when it came to an Indian cricket match. 8 hours ( or 8x5 hours) of pure bliss. None of my girl friends dug me back then.

Here's a bow to the greatest sport ever - Cricket.

So coming to this morning, the show featured the influence of sponsorship on sports. ICC chairman stated that a whopping 1.2 billion dollars would be amassed via sponsorships by the end of 2008. Also a few cricketers featured on the programme ( yesh, British english) Stephen Fleming the kiwi captain and Mushtaq Ahmed (not a big fan of him). They were talking about endorsements and how they exercise caution while deciding to endorse a product.

Then came the interesting part - tobacco and sports. The above cricketers claimed that they would never endorse anything related to tobacco, alcohol and gambling. I was sitting there saying bull !! Didn't we not have the Wills cup ? Wasn't Four Square a big sponsor of cricket? Feh !

In any event the experience was great just listening about cricket and too bad no Indian cricketer was on. That would have definitely made my day.

By the time I reached our concrete parking lot, satellite radio gave up on me and also reminded me there are less important things like earning my bread than living in passion for cricket. Also I could not listen to the rest of the programme.