91Èȱ¬

In many ways cricket provides the most interesting example of bucking the downturn.

around the world the , once insulated from global currents, .

Yet last weekend when the the talk was not about cutting back but more investment. Clearly many Indians believe they have found the cricket format which is a license .

The IPL cap for purchasing players has increased from $5m to $7m. In addition there is to be a one-month trading window from 15 December and this will not be subject to budgetary limits.

The franchises sold earlier this year, long before the crash, , but already they have recovered 80% of their money. have increased in value to $300m.

Not bad for a start-up which was not even .

And it is the IPL which is driving other money-making ventures in cricket, such as next weekend's .

The buoyancy of these sports reflects the fact that they all see themselves in a race to be the number two sport in the world, number two to the unchallenged number one world sport - .

Interestingly the strength of these wannabes at number two spot also shows how they interact with football.

So in India , which has the rights to the IPL says that young Indians, aged 15 and under, are flocking because of the attraction of the and the .

For these Indians the televising of the matches comes during peak viewing times. This does not apply to American sports such as or , which may explain why it has not taken off in India.

This must be good news for the Premier League. It will when it sets about doing its next television deal.

Indeed such is the mood of optimism that the leaders in the sports industry were entertained to a lavish meal near St Paul's Cathedral in London on Thursday followed by a conference on Friday telling us how sports sell when nothing else seems to do so.

But is this not just the sort of hype you would expect from the people who run these sports? Surely sports cannot buck the economic turbulence as they say?

Before I answer that question let me tell you what happened during a breakfast meeting with those involved in either running or , NFL or cricket...

One journalist asked: "Is sponsorship in these difficult times an indulgence, as jobs are lost and firms close down?"

No sooner had the journalist uttered the words then one of the sports representatives reacted as if the journalist had offered him violence.

He stopped munching his salmon sandwich and declared that sponsorship was not an indulgence, those days were long gone. Adding that sponsorship was very good business, more so now.

The question was in the context of the fact that , has been sponsoring cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and RBS advertisement is very prominent in the stadiums where the India versus Australia series is being played.

Recession or no recession, still makes good commercial sense. That is the message the leaders of the sports industry are giving.

Nobody knows how deep this recession may be, or how long it may last. But for the moment sports, certainly, are not singing a song of doom and gloom but one of remarkable optimism. But that, you could say, is sport in a nutshell.

It has the capacity to .

And as any sports fan knows, such optimism often proves misplaced.