South Asian Business news and information

England is the birth place of cricket and cricket is still the second most popular game in England. This time, many people are hoping that England will do well in World Cup Cricket 2007. Naturally, many people will stay in front of the TV sets and skip work and that is going to become costly for the British economy.

Zee News reported:

"Although it will not grab the international imagination to the same extent as the soccer World Cup it remains the case that, even to those only half interested, watching cricket is one of the best ways of avoiding working known to man," said the study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

"Two of England`s matches, against New Zealand on March 16 and against Pakistan on March 30, are on Friday afternoons and will be very tempting to those who feel inclined to stay on in the pub after lunch," said CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams, the report`s author.

McWilliams said his independent consultancy estimates a loss of about 5.0 percent of a day`s gross domestic product for each day of the World Cup.

"This would cost the economy about 270 million pounds gross, just enough to be noticed in some of the monthly economic figures.

The only consolation is that World Cup Cricket 2007 is not going to affect the British economy in the same way that World Cup Football 2006 did. Still, it is a significant amount of loss and I wish that more research be carried out about this kind of productivity losses.

Indian economy will suffer even more productivity loss. The matches will take place at night and in the next day many people will turn up to their working place in half awake condition.