Cricket World Cup
Another international sporting event, another poor England performance.
We really haven't performed particularly well for the past few months, team spirit seems to be lacking, and rather a lot was put on Michael Vaughan's shoulders: cetainly too much for a player who had been out of the game for a year.
A word or two on the tournament itself. The thing really was far too long, a result of corporate interference I'm sure, and the tickets were too expensive and the security just too anal. So, instead of a Carribean festival, we ended up with a pretty souless event that seemend to drag on for aeons.
A word in ICC's ear: drop the Super 8s, just go from group to knockout and let's get things flowing a bit better for 2011; drop the bloody prices so we have some spectators. Oh yes, and get the umpires to read the rule book.
Now moving on to watching the games on the telly - or rather, not watching any games on the telly. Sky, of course, had the whole tournament sewn up so leaving those of us who refuse to be ripped off by Murdoch listening on Test Match Special (no bad thing) and grabbing highlights at midnight. Isn't it about time that either a) these tournaments were shared amongst the broadcasters (didn't something like this happen for the Football World Cup last year?) or b) sort out a pay-per-view structure. I have an old Sky box, but I'm not allowed to access PPV because I don't pay a monthly subscription - sounds like throwing money away to me. I could bang on for hours about this stuff - but I'll stop right now.
A final, just about related note: I've just booked tickets for the 4th England v West Indies test at Durham, neither team have performed particularly well recently, should be interesting to see how the series goes. Plus, I've never been to a test match before.
We really haven't performed particularly well for the past few months, team spirit seems to be lacking, and rather a lot was put on Michael Vaughan's shoulders: cetainly too much for a player who had been out of the game for a year.
A word or two on the tournament itself. The thing really was far too long, a result of corporate interference I'm sure, and the tickets were too expensive and the security just too anal. So, instead of a Carribean festival, we ended up with a pretty souless event that seemend to drag on for aeons.
A word in ICC's ear: drop the Super 8s, just go from group to knockout and let's get things flowing a bit better for 2011; drop the bloody prices so we have some spectators. Oh yes, and get the umpires to read the rule book.
Now moving on to watching the games on the telly - or rather, not watching any games on the telly. Sky, of course, had the whole tournament sewn up so leaving those of us who refuse to be ripped off by Murdoch listening on Test Match Special (no bad thing) and grabbing highlights at midnight. Isn't it about time that either a) these tournaments were shared amongst the broadcasters (didn't something like this happen for the Football World Cup last year?) or b) sort out a pay-per-view structure. I have an old Sky box, but I'm not allowed to access PPV because I don't pay a monthly subscription - sounds like throwing money away to me. I could bang on for hours about this stuff - but I'll stop right now.
A final, just about related note: I've just booked tickets for the 4th England v West Indies test at Durham, neither team have performed particularly well recently, should be interesting to see how the series goes. Plus, I've never been to a test match before.
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