SLC should focus on dwindling viewer curiosity at Test venues – By Sunil Thenabadu
It is a gigantic compassion to glimpse only a miniature spectator surveillance at many closely contested Test matches at home venues. Spectator interest should have been at the forefront of the awareness of authorities of Sri Lanka Cricket. They should very well comprehend that a Test match will not be booming without a weighty spectator audience.
In the test matches played recently in Galle in with even the grass banks were not full, there were plenty of vacant seats. Such barrenness is not felt when Test matches are played in nations like India Bangladesh, Australia and England. Sri Lankan fans also are equally passionate about cricket. But the non affluent have to hurdle over obvious constraints to watch a Test match unlike our counterparts in other countries.
In Sri Lanka there are enough and more cricket enthusiasts who are non-affluent but fanatical to arrive at the venues. They would be buoyant to gaze at Test cricket with zest and passion if afforded this scenario. Some types of such incentives have to be accessible to attract schoolboys to make the stands at half full so that the bareness in the stands would not be felt.
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It is pertinent to mention regretfully the SLC authorities have not made any endeavour to draw spectators to the venues when it was observed that there were only a handful of spectators at the beginning of a Test when they would have well known that our cricketers need a boost..
This is food for superlative thought for the authorities of the SLC This should have been a matter treated as precedence as these dour scenes with barren stands should not be tolerable, exposed to the world which is telecast worldwide.
Strategies should also have been strained up to magnetize spectators by compliance of incentives like free entrance low attendance reflects very shoddily on our cricket which is highly ranked amongst the world’s cricketing fraternity as Sri Lanka has come to be known widely worldwide because of the cricketing prowess and approach . With the world Champions Australia are to play two Tests in the Test Championship series in Galle the authorities of SLC should make plans to attract spectators.
Sunil Thenabadu
e mail sthenabadu@hotmail.com
