Cricket: process vs product

Another World Cup, another failure, another familiar show of burning effigies and another chorus calling for sackings. Much like our team built its team combination midway during the World Cup public interest in our entire cricketing system begins and ends at our international performances.
Dismayed at the result, the familiar cacophony of angry sentiments continues to ignore a basic fact of performance enhancement: get interested in the process, if you want a great product. Look yourselves in the mirror and ask honestly: will you risk your child adopting sports as a profession where the retirement age is at most 40, where a single injury can potentially retire you even earlier, and where there is no insurance against such an eventuality? It gets much scarier when only 11 out of a potential pool of 180 million reap the rewards of fame, glamour, and more importantly financial security. Those who fall by the wayside, fall through a black hole of ignominy and poverty and do not make even a footnote in our sporting history. If fruit hangs only at the very top of a tree it takes only the extremely adventurous or those with nothing to lose to try such a profession. Therefore, instead of venting our frustration at the national team, we should ask ourselves: are we and our media interested in the state of the game at large? There is no quick fix for the product when the process is flawed.
Dr Raja Muhammad Atif Azad
Limerick
Ireland