You Dont Get No View Like You Do From The Top Of The World

Flushed with the confidence of a cricket fan who has seen England get to the top of the test rankings and his team towards the top end of the County Championship. I was arguing with a mate earlier in the week about the merits of cricket.

In contrast to my attack on tennis last week see: http://www.blogger.com/goog_2096540392  there is very little I prefer in this world than sitting watching cricket on a lovely summer afternoon.

Granted we don’t get many of them – certainly not this summer (the sun tan lotion I bought in May for all the days I was going to spend watching leather hit willow has barely been used) but if we did, then it would be fantastic.

Now, my mate is largely a cricket philistine. It can’t be a great sport, he said “because American’s don’t play it” and because it “wasn’t truly global.”

Now even if I think he is wrong (he was told this, forcibly) and leaving aside the fact that something can be nichė and still fabulous, as anyone who has heard for example the Wildhearts first album can attest and also that he is a non league football fan who didn’t spot the irony in claiming that something didn’t have mass appeal so couldn’t be worth watching; he does have a point in one aspect of what he said.

When Cricket has a world Cup as it did this year, there are 16 teams in it. There are only eight test playing Nations (England, Australia, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, West Indies, New Zealand and Bangladesh) and they all play each other.

Contrast this to football: In preparation (honestly, they aren’t just thrown together, these things!)  for writing this blog I had a quick look at the FIFA Website and according to their official rankings there are 203 teams playing International Football. San Marino prop the rest up.

All of which goes to prove why we at Football Business don’t sell cricket franchises, I suppose. Simply nothing can compete with football in the world’s sporting conscience.

We will, as I have mentioned before happily sort out franchises anywhere in the world. So if you want to start a league somewhere there’s a pitch and you have the desire to run one then give us a call.

And if you want us to bore you with some cricket chat, we could probably help there too.