Cricket’s dying... How True...

I recently read an interview of Brian Lara about how cricket is a dying sport... and I for one felt how true it is...

You dont need to look any further than the ICC world cup qualification.

Bermuda......Canada......Ireland......Kenya......Netherlands......Scotland UAE......Oman......Namibia......Denmark......Afghanistan......Uganda

Many of these teams are just there to make up the numbers. Except from Kenya, I could hardly name a few players from the rest of the teams. Denmark, Netherlands, Canada combined has a total of around 12 players of Indian subcontinent origin. Hardly you can say it as a growth at grass root level. After 30 years since WC inception, this is the state of the world cup.

Lets take the crickets development. In the affiliate and associate countries listed under ICC,

I feel of all those countries, the ones that could be game changers are US and China... US with the money it could bring in, and China for its population. But unfortunately, Football is one of the highly followed game in China, and Basketball is slowly gaining hand(I assume due to Yao Ming).
In US, even football finds it difficult, even though they have a good national football team. They tried it with Beckham, and earlier with Pele to little effect. It would be a hard race for cricket to succeed in these countries.

What about cricket in the established nations...
Football is pretty popular in Australia, with them doing good in the last world cup and are sure to qualify for this WC. South Africa is the host nation of this years world cup and surely will see increase in reach/popularity (http://www.safarinow.com/cms/sport-in-south-africa/irie.aspx). England of course is one of the biggest footballing nation. Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa are all rugby nations too...

Carib, once the place of great Cricketers are still a struggling nation to create the same pool of talent they once had... I would put England and New Zealand in the same category.
http://cricket24x7.today.com/2009/01/10/crisis-in-west-indies-and-new-zealand/

India is surely catching up in football. Few years back I never knew anyone following football, but I follow it fanatically now and I know a few people who do follow EPL. I don't have stats on it, but if you look at the EPL fantasy premier league registered 37313 out of 1920659 are Indians. Pretty good number, I would say, and all EPL/Champions league matches are live in India, if u will take it as an indicator of the growing popularity.

And if reports are true, any of these players(16 young Indian footballers to train at arsenal camp) could provide a spark for the sport to be a hit in India.

Cricket is very much dependent on Indian subcontinent... Unless drastic measures aren't taken to make it a truly global sport, it would become a more localized sport than it is now...