There has been a lot of bad news in cricket lately. I am not going to go into a detailed reaction, but some weeks it is hard to be a cricket fan – and this has been one of those weeks.
However, thankfully, in the cricketing backwater of Dublin, Ireland, the entire world has been able to witness entertaining, swashbuckling cricket played with joy and abandon to help us all forget about corruption and scandal for at least a little while.
The first Ireland vs Pakistan ODI ended in a thrilling tie – and the second appears to be going Pakistan’s way despite a brilliant century from Sussex’s Ed Joyce.
But the best part of the matches has been the fact that Cricket Ireland has streamed the matches live, free, and worldwide on its website. The Cricket Couch wrote a great post about it, he said better than I ever could:
It was throwback to an earlier time. A time when cricket was innocent and the pictures shot with cameras you could count with the fingers on one hand; Almost an amateurish feel to the angles and the switch to the different views trying to track the ball down; The voices telling you what you need to know rather than trying to capture your attention so that they could peddle you a product; No graphics besides the odd look at the scorecard and a demand of the viewer to pay attention to the live pictures because there weren’t many replays on the screen; A window in to the past that in fact gave us a peek in to the future of cricket broadcasts.
…
If the ones that are in charge of running the sport are really keen on growing the sport and its fan base, the path is laid out right in front of them.
Nothing more really needs to be added, except this: it was a really, really good day for cricket – and the sport sorely needed a good day. Cheers to Cricket Ireland.
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Today is: the IPL final, day three of England vs New Zealand, and the aforementioned Ireland vs Pakistan ODI. So today I am going avoid Cricinfo and Twitter and just watch the cricket.
Sussex match reports to follow tomorrow.
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