Word: cricketed
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...sport that American comedian Robin Williams memorably described as "baseball on valium" suddenly such big business? Because Indians don't find it dull at all. Cricket is the closest thing to a universal religion in a diverse nation that is home to a sixth of the world's population. Until the Indian TV market opened to private broadcasters in the early 1990s, however, its potential was untapped. A state-owned broadcaster, Doordashan, held a monopoly on TV rights, and "they used to give them away," groans Thawani. Today, interest in the sport is blossoming worldwide, making televised matches?along with...
...Partly because of that "aggressive" international push, says Speed, the ICC chief, cricket is increasingly being viewed by broadcasters as a truly global sport, like soccer. Even in the U.S., cricket is catching on. There, pay-per-view cable subscribers forked out roughly $50 million to watch the 2005 Test series between India and Pakistan, making the U.S. the third-biggest revenue source for that tournament. (The ICC says those statistics are partly explained by 2 million ethnic South Asians living...
...hasn't hurt that the last few years have produced some great cricket. England's win over Australia last year drew "the highest levels of public interest in cricket in a generation," according to Deloitte's Sports Business Group, with 7.7 million viewers in Britain?40% of its total TV audience?and millions more around the world. The easing of political tension between India and Pakistan has also allowed the two great South Asian rivals to play each other three times since 2004. Technology has played a part, too. Stump-mounted mini-cameras, computer graphics to predict a ball...
...national team has captured only one World Cup?the tournament held every four years in the game's one-day format?and that was in 1983. It's been almost as long since India took a foreign Test series, not counting its victory against lowly Zimbabwe last autumn. "The cricket talent in India is still very much untapped," says Rahul Dravid, captain of the country's team. "The hope is that the new money can help find our future stars...
...game's finances? Possibly. But as he looks ahead to next year's World Cup in the West Indies, that's not something that Thawani worries about. "An Indian win is what the fans want," he says. Given what India would pay to see that, it's what cricket's new business leaders want...