Is Cricket a Spectator Sport?

Cricket just isn’t a spectator sport. It never was. It was always meant to be a leisurely diversion for British gentries played across long hours and days at an immensely soporific pace. The pace, thank heavens, has quickened with the introduction of limited overs Cricket. However, on a pure entertainment scale, there are many other sports that outcompete Cricket. One perennially perplexing point for me has been the popularity of Cricket in India. There is simply no logical reason why a sport, which takes up such huge amounts of time for so little output, should be so publicly adored. On the fitness scale, Cricketers would rank amongst the least fit sportsmen.
For one-dayers, out of 7 and a half hours of play, only 50 minutes is real action, out of which many balls are dot balls. That is a ratio of one active minute for every 9 inactive minutes (at best). That’s a ridiculously lopsided ratio for any spectator sport. The inactive parts increase manifold in test matches. As far as overall entertainment goes, Twenty-20’s are an improvement but the active/inactive ratio remains the same as one-dayers.
The only ones to profit from these huge lulls in play are the sponsors, who get plenty of time to squeeze in their promotional spiels.