The Economics of a Sport like Cricket

The Cricket World Cup 2007 is on, so far, surrounded by strangeness. A team ranked 4th loses to an unranked team, their coach dies under suspicious circumstances, a murder, and a whole nexus of sporting corruption is on the radar.

The lid is open to the can of worms. That’s one side of the spectrum. The spectrum of the economics of a sport like Cricket, once called the “gentlemen’ game”. The other side of the spectrum, which confuses me a bit, is best illustrated with ads from Indian sponsors (like IndianOil, Hero Honda etc.) in the arena. I haven’t come across any other sporting event at a global level, exhibiting Indian sponsorship at this magnitude. And it makes sense, because its not “just a sport” in India, its a “game of business”, with some of the highest paid players in the sport, most earnings from television viewership, rich endorsements, the under-ground match fixing nexus (spanning from the middle-east to elsewhere), team selection scandals, the fans turning to vandalism on a single defeat … the list goes on. It’s not a sport anymore, a money-craved reality-show maybe, but not a sport as we once knew it to be.

In memory of Mr. Bob Woolmer (1948-2007).

A tragic victim of sporting economics perhaps, but he will always remain in our memories as a true legend.

Spam-o-Satisfaction

Who doesn’t get annoyed with those unsolicited messages on mortgage, viagra and other strange medicines in their mailbox? And while, nearly two thirds of all email is spam, and while, between 2005 and 2006, the number of unsolicited e-mails increased 147 percent. And yet, while, US and Taiwan lead the spamming spree, there’s still some good news. It’s satisfying to read this on my WP dashboard …

Akismet has caught 10,133 spam for you since you first installed it.

And that’s just my blog, in a short span of 3-4 months. Even more satisfying to notice this on my hosting panel …

SpamAssassin has caught 12,590 spam in the past 60 days.

And finally, from my own research Gmail detects nearly 90% of all spam coming to my Gmail mailbox (although it still shows some false identifications). Hmm, getting there, slowly but surely.