The Number Game

Being a hardcore cricket enthusiast you would be expecting me
to be working overnight to get India's Net run rate calculations right... An exact value that would enable us to reach the Super 8 stages of the World Cup. How much do we need to score if we bat first, by what margin do we need to win our remaining matches, how many wickets can we afford to lose in the bargain and so on...

Well, I am certainly dabbling with a lot of numbers, but of a slightly different nature...

Today, cricket is a great money spinner. The kind of money involved is mind boggling. It is speculated that advertisment slots worth around 12000 crores have already been sold. (Infact its so huge, that I really
dont know the exact number of zeros in it !! ). LG, Pepsi, Nike, Hutch, Nokia, ITC.. the list goes on and on..Why have all of them pumped in so much money ? For the simple reason that they expect Team India to reach atleast the semi-finals (If it does that, it would have played 10 matches) and this would guarantee a good TRP rating for the channel and probably a good ROI for the companies.

Just imagine what would happen to all this money if Team India is sent packing ! What happens to all the projected ROI's, sales estimation, month long promotional campaigns ?? Would a West Indies - Ireland 2nd round match generate the same viewership ??....Would the number of Indians watching the World Cup remain the same, or would half of them just switch off ?... Lots of questions......Much more difficult than calculating the Net Run Rate......

To add on...Even Mandira Bedi's clothes or the 'lack of it' wont be
able to do the trick.. Hence India has to qualify.....and something
tells me that they will... Not necessarily a cricketing reason !!!