So you can watch a 4 hour cricket match but not a 2 hour baseball game?
What I mean is in relativity.
So going from a whole day down to 3-4 hours was significant and lead to for example the IPL to become one of the biggest leagues in the world.
And for someone like me who grew up in cricket countries who has a passing interest, hasn’t watched in years and can’t stand watching test cricket which lasts days and One Days which last an entire day, T20 absolutely brought me back into the sport, I’ve even looked into possibly playing cricket again next summer as there is a T20 league around and in the evenings I’m watching the Caribbean Premier League and loving it these last few weeks.
Change comes very slow in soccer, but some have proposed lowering the amount of playtime from 90 minutes to 60 and stopping the clock when play is suspended for fouls and out of bounds etc. and I can’t fault the logic because the way things are now, due to all the stops in play if memory serves me correct an average of 55 minutes is actually spent playing of the 90.
So in T20 for example, there’s a bunch of stuff they do to stop dead space between plays, majorly if the innings isn’t done within 75 minutes the umpire can award the batting side 6 runs per over until the innings are done, barring extenuating circumstances, just as an example.
So I’m by no means a baseball expert but there could be a way to play with the game and make it punchier as cricket did relative to what it was.
As people’s attention spans become shorter and shorter and because we have so much choice in what we can watch and do with our time it’s more and more important for sports to adapt to that reality.
Another good example and for a variety of reasons beyond just the length of time races take that is getting creamed is NASCAR.
But anyway, was just a suggestion.
