MV Sridhar's experience would benifit BCCI

As the Indian cricket board gears up for the 2011 World Cup, it could benefit immensely from the inputs of former manager Sridhar's experience of being part of an event like the 2010 Football WC inu00a0South Africa

It is less than 200 days to go for next year's 50-over mega-event, the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, to be co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni, speaking at an ICC function to announce the event mascot's name 'Stumpy' on Monday, said the pressure was on the three hosts to organise the event well.

Every event has a benchmark. When it comes to organising World Cups, it's undoubtedly FIFA, which sets the mark of excellence. The recent football World Cup in South Africa was a shining example of examplery organisation.u00a0

As far as the cricket WC is concerned, the pressure is now on the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to deliver as co-hosts.

Cricket man
Hence, it's nice to know that they had one of their own officials at the FIFA World Cup.

Former Ranji stalwart and Hyderabad Cricket Association's senior cricket administrator, Dr M V Sridhar, had a first-hand experience of FIFA's organisational skills at the SA event.

Undoubtedly, BCCI's World Cup organising committee could benefit from his inputs.

The IT company that Sridhar works for was assigned by FIFA to take care of event management solution, accreditation management and asset management across all the 10 venues of the tournament.

Sridhar was the head of the sports marketing department. "I will be very happy if the BCCI asked me to share my experience and try and see if we can augment something for the coming World Cup," said Sridhar, who had to stay back after the World Cup to wind up his department's operations in South Africa and returned just last week.

Sridhar was the mainstay of Hyderabad's batting in the 90s, making 6701 runs at 48.91 with 21 hundreds and a highest score of 366. After retirement, he stayed with the gameu00a0 as as administrator.

"What you are exposed to in cricket cannot be compared to football. If cricket is X, football is 10X. The scale is much wider, bigger and larger," said Sridhar, who was tour manager of India's 2007-08 series in Australia.

"What we are used to organising (as part of HCA) is a one off event like a one-day international.

"But the World Cup was a learning experience in terms of large scale organisation, hold games one after the other and the massive movement of personnel, teams and VVIPs from one venue to other.

"FIFA's system is time tested and then rolled out, and lot of it can be used in the cricketing world."

Main challenge
"Today, the main challenge for any sport is to bring the spectator to the ground. A one-off event like a one-dayer is okay but if it's a World Cup, the spectator experience has to be wonderful so that it draws people to watch the game everyday.

"In SA, it was like a family evening out. Even what we are trying to achieve in the Indian Premier League is one fragment of what football does.

"So, the entire spectator experience enhancement is something we can straightaway pick from the World Cup and deploy here.

As much as there is to take from the World Cup experience in South Africa, Sridhar wouldn't recommend the vuvuzelas. "Yes, they (vuvuzelas) are very noisy, but once the game starts you enjoy it. And in football, the game lasts only 90 minutes otherwise you would be dead," laughed Sridhar.

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