By Abeed Hassnat
On my bed doing this article and Sunday’s sport was jam
packed. Cricket, rugby and football. The
rugby of the 6 Nations got me going on the weather and the excitement of a new
set of matches each weekend. The football of the African Cup of Nation teared me
up when the underdogs, Zambia, won it on penalties in such a hard fought game.
And the BPL? It got me talking and writing now.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board has noticed that they are
behind on the Twenty20 point of view of the world of cricket. The recent
introductions of various lucrative Twenty20 competitions with the IPL, Friends
Life T20 and many more made the board think if they should get into the act and
improve their Twenty20 status or be in the focus of getting some first-class
cricket and one day cricket sorted.
The pressures of being part of the outside world got to them
and with many critics and analysts saying that this would derail Bangladesh in
the train to achieve the goal of being one of the household countries of
cricket. There are the positives of new
talent from these teams getting popularity and the possibility of being picked
for their international sides as well as media attention on Bangladesh cricket
and the excitement the tournament brings.
You might have thought why I got 6 Nations and the African
Cup of Nations into the act? Well comparing the 6 Nations and the BPL is like
choosing between a baguette that has less filling but is bigger and a baguette
that has a lot of filling but smaller. You would lose the excitement a bit when
you eat the plain bread bit of that less filling baguette but then when you
finally get to the filling bit of that baguette, the excitement come back
again. The BPL is having lots of excitement with non-stop cricketing action
with enjoying that filling using every taste buds in your tongue. Your problem
is that is stops when you hardly begun. With only 6 teams and using more
foreign players in a team, you don’t get the authentic and genuine feeling of
Bangladesh cricket with players like Chris Gayle and Abdul Razzaq providing the
goods for the team and only the Bangladeshi players are made to look like
they’ve been forced into the sides just to wave the flag of Bangladesh in the
side although half of the players are foreign.
Anyways, it gives a platform to new audiences in not only in
Bangladesh but to some others. Here in the UK, literally every sports is
covered in Pay-TV thanks to Sky(!) But the BPL is shown in free-to-air as well
as ITV showing the IPL free-to-air. Cricket had been really popular back in the
days of the 90s and the early noughties where Channel 4 shown these cricket
matches and finding a tournament broadcast that’s available to literally more
than 20 million people that provides excitement and entertainment is much
needed.
So the cricket world welcomes the BPL and with big and major
players like Chris Gayle, Abdul Razzaq, Brad Hodge, Muralitharan and some more,
does the audience accept this as an exciting tournament to enjoy or do they eek
out the sense of desperation from the cricket board to be part of a trend in
Twenty20s?
No comments:
Post a Comment