Word: sport
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...worth six runs. The team with the most runs wins. O.K., it's more complicated than that, but not by much. Purists sniff that it is dumbed-down cricket, but it is easily digested by neophytes. Last January, Stanford spent $3.5 million to test-market the sport in Fort Collins, Colo., using billboards and bus-stop ads to persuade the town's 130,000 residents to watch a telecast of a Twenty20 tournament in the Caribbean. On the basis of that experiment, Stanford believes an American viewer can "understand Twenty20 in as little as 20 minutes...
...cricket stadium he has built in Antigua, complete with an American-style hall of fame. He revels in dropping the names of Caribbean cricket stars he now counts as his friends. But his spending on Twenty20 is not just a rich fan's self-indulgence: he says the sport is the perfect vehicle for the Stanford brand name, allowing him to expand his business to new markets...
...alone in believing Twenty20 can greatly extend cricket's reach. "It's a format that gives us the potential for the game to become a genuinely global sport," says Peter Young, general manager of public affairs at Cricket Australia. But not everybody agrees that Stanford's plan--he aims to host an annual big-money game for the next five years--is the smartest way to promote the sport. The big spending, say critics, makes for good publicity but not necessarily good business...
...teams squaring off on Nov. 1--England and a team of Caribbean All-Stars--are hardly big draws. The sport's heaviest hitters are in India and Pakistan, which have giant home markets and powerful teams. Outside of the Indian subcontinent, cricket's strongest franchise is Australia, which dominates test cricket and other forms of the sport. With no Indians, Pakistanis or Australians on display in Antigua, it will be a bit like having the Minnesota Twins and the Pittsburgh Pirates play for baseball's largest purse: great for their fans, but who else would bother to watch...
...audiences, like Americans and Chinese, who won't miss the stars. And ultimately, he's counting on Twenty20's purest qualities. "People are going to fall in love with this game--you'll see," he says. "In 10 years, this could be the world's biggest sport, bigger than soccer." So he's prone to a little hyperbole. But what's more American than overkill...