It was always like this - the game, by nature is something like that. One has to build the taste for it. Even for a T20, it takes almost 3.5 hours to finish. Besides, the core of the game slow - for example, take fast bowling - the most exciting element of the game. To watch 6 balls, sometimes one has to wait 6 minutes. Also, the game by it's nature often gets boring - unless one is stat fanatic, 80% of ODI/T20 matches become academic by half way. Even the most one sided soccer match has a thrill in it as long as the score line in up to one goal apart. For a cricket game, it's not possible to change the course of a game with one stunning act (like a home run or goal or touch down or a KO punch).
It's not surprising that with Cricket, Golf & Snooker is on top in this list. I often bring Golf & Snooker discussing cricket, because I find remarkable similarity in these 3 games - all 3 are slow by nature, extremely skilled game (too technical for average fan to understand unless he spends good time to study & learn the finer things), and a game with very high demerits for every single mistake. And, despite being a team game, cricket is an individualistic sports like these two - at the end it's one on one.
American Football (Gridiron) is among top because I believe apart from Gringos, this game is hardly followed or understood by rest of the world. But, if one understands the basic principle & the scoring system of it, it's quite exciting, tactical and absorbing. Similarly, cycling & racing has a different interest -
when Armstrong was there (before being exposed), I did follow the Tournai closely - it's fun to follow daily overall leaders, yellow, green & pink shirt leaders. Cycling has several types - road race, mountain biking, sprint, team pursuit, Kiren, road time trial .... it's indeed exciting in Olympics and the mountain races of Tour de France between Alps. Formula 1 was my 2nd most followed sport between 1996 to 2004, when Schumi was there ..... Dart is extremely complex to understand - it's just not random target practice; not much popular outside British commonwealth. Surprisingly basketball is lower, may be again cultural issue - may be because 5 of 7 such votes are cast by Chinese & south Asians .....
Cricket's biggest problem is - it's best quality has a long duration associated, and that's mutually exclusive at a very high correlation. Similarly, six hole golf or rapid Snooker will be another joke. Once Palmer said that from Thursday morning when I step into fairway to 18th hole of Sunday evening, these are so many finer things to follow that it's a mental torture - it's easy to pot balls, tougher part is to overcome the fear of missing the hole by an inch.
Snooker's key is the positioning of Q ball with precision shots so that every time a color ball is available after a red - it needs extreme accuracy & zero tolerance from perfection, but the task is repetitive, almost boring for common people. And, like cricket, the longer the game, the better the contest - WC Final is played for 2 days, 35 frames; and it has some epic fails & come backs in the course. Cricket batting is also like that also - do a repetitive task for hours, sessions, even days together with perfection; while bowlers try to break that perfection - obviously it'll become boring, for common eye. That's why, I like Test match, because that game is not about hitting or restricting scoring, rather inch by inch consolidating position like a strategic war game. One has to build the taste in the way the game has it's core - otherwise even T10 is quite boring & monotonous.
