need to add the games people enjoy like basketball, soccer, cricket.

Have spoken to people and heard a commentator say they cant believe india, a cricket mad country, dosnt have cricket in the games.

I think the coverage on TEN is crappy, but I am enjoying the Fox coverage though.

I think it is great that people from sports that don't get much tv time get a bit of fame/payback for their hard work. ie swimmers, squash players etc.

It is a bit of a nothing competition... but at least it stops Neighbours from being on air.

haha agree with the neighbours comment, but i just cant get interested in what they are showing. I strongly agree with NBA agent, it makes perfect sense to add more mainstream sports. but not only is india a cricket mad country most of the teams in the commonwealth games play cricket in one form or another. they should have introduced T20, would have been good for india, aussies and the poms go at it. i think soccer would be great but would be very one sided it would end up being Aus vs England

not to mention neither national soccer team would take it seriously and it would have to be a bunch of young guys.

I am a sports nut and follow pretty muh everything that Australia is involved in, but I must admit, these Delhi games have been very hard to get excited about. The bothced preparations by the Indians, using child labour, currupt games and political oranisers, the threat of terrorism, and the fact that so many big names are missing from all of the participating nations.

Also, I agree that at least 20/20 cricket could have been included...it is a sport played by commonwealth nations and the Indians are mad for it!

Oh, and not to mention the fact that the stands have been all empty...

Haven't been paying any attention.

I am retired and have Foxtel so have a choice of 6 channels to watch, so have seen a fair bit of it. I have mainly been watching the swimming, netball, a bit of the cycling and some weightlifting. Coverage is great in that you get to see the whole games, not just a few minutes before switching to something else.

'Crash' Craddock had a telling few pars on this in today's Advertiser: when India won the cricket Test the other day, cricinfo had so many visitors (presumably from India) the site crashed for 20 minutes under the strain.

It's safe to say these millions of extra visitors weren't trying to visit cricinfo on their mobile devices while spectating at the Games.

Been watching the womens hockey pretty closely ;)

Maybe they should bring in Women bikini racing??

not only that imagine the classes you could have. from A cups to unclassified lol.

SRT070 - just come up to the Gold Coast for that event :)

http://linky.com.au/8wp2a

Haha so ive heard, its what made me think it should be an olympic event.

AFL should be in it, so should basketball.

I am a sucker for any sport, so have been watching the coverage on One. But it really has got beyond a joke for how poor the competition is. The commentators are struggling to make it at all relevant.

The cycling in particular is a joke - the only other competitive country in the Commonwealth, England, withdrew their team. The swimming is not much better, nor for that matter the gymnastics (the overall quality of which is just appalling).

I quite like our National Anthem, but if I have to hear Advance Australia Fair one more time - Aaarghh - and it is only half way through the first week of competition.

Great Britain competes as each of its constituent countries - it would be more interesting if Australia competed as each of the States and Territories.

At what other games could Australia ever win a medal in gymnastics XY? ;-)

Ando - Lauren
Australian women have placed 4th-8th consistently over the last 15 years at worlds and Olympics, usually top 6.

XY - re quality of gymnastics overall, I agree somewhat, but not entirely. Australian women, in particular, have been excellent. However, we tend to judge the routines we see here against the routines we see when Olympics and Wordls are shown on Australian tv. Those routines are almost solely the top 5-10 gymnasts in qualifying comps and then the finalists. So they are the cream of the crop.

If you ever go and watch a full week of competition at worlds or Olympics, you'll realise the tv coverage really shows the exceptionally high quality gymnasts and routines. This has particularly been the case since the changes (in the last Olympic cycle) to allow more apparatus specialists to qualify as specialists, rather than as all around performers. So the apparatus finals usually have a lot of people who can do that apparatus at a level way above most gymnasts in the competition. e.g., Prashanth on pommels, Lauren Mitchell on beam.

That said, the Australians have turned in some very good performances in the track cycling. Hope they haven't peaked too early and can back up for Worlds. Likewise the male gymnasts in London in a few weeks.

Ando - Lauren
Australian women have placed 4th-8th consistently over the last 15 years at worlds and Olympics, usually top 6.

XY - re quality of gymnastics overall, I agree somewhat, but not entirely. Australian women, in particular, have been excellent. However, we tend to judge the routines we see here against the routines we see when Olympics and Wordls are shown on Australian tv. Those routines are almost solely the top 5-10 gymnasts in qualifying comps and then the finalists. So they are the cream of the crop.

If you ever go and watch a full week of competition at worlds or Olympics, you'll realise the tv coverage really shows the exceptionally high quality gymnasts and routines. This has particularly been the case since the changes (in the last Olympic cycle) to allow more apparatus specialists to qualify as specialists, rather than as all around performers. So the apparatus finals usually have a lot of people who can do that apparatus at a level way above most gymnasts in the competition. e.g., Prashanth on pommels, Lauren Mitchell on beam.

That said, the Australians have turned in some very good performances in the track cycling. Hope they haven't peaked too early and can back up for Worlds. Likewise the male gymnasts in London in a few weeks.

XY, I overheard a bit of the netball on radio. They were saying that India had more or less entered a basketball team just to have a presence in the sport. I think they were getting absolutely thrashed by Malawi.

God I love the Gold Coast.

Haven't been watching much. Every time I have a look some Australian douche is giving the crowd the finger (Ok, it only happened twice, but still). Judas Hodge should get citizenship!

The whole buildup by Fox and Ten got a bit annoying. I know they had to promote their product but damn! They made it sound like the biggest sporting event of the century.

Isaac, basketballers getting thrashed by netballers from Malawi! I think that needs its own thread...

There has actually been a lot of that going on, particularly from the Indian team as it gets automatic qualification to every event under the sun.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have some events where only 4 countries put up a competitor. Some competition!

When we hosted the Commonwealth Games, everything was wonderful. As soon as it's someone else's turn, we wonder if it shouldn't be discontinued.

I laughed a bit at one of the Eastern states papers today. They had an article about the AU chick getting her 100m gold canned. Then an article linked from it, wondering if the 100m has lost its allure.

Even though they're competing for pyrites I quite enjoy having it as an option for evening viewing. I just feel sorry for the people who are the best in Australia for an event which happens to have someone else in the Commonwealth who's actually world class and robs them of the gold - it feels like you're entitled to Commonwealth gold if you're the best Australia has to offer.

UK beat us at the last Olympics and they've surely been pouring cash into their programmes in the lead up to London 2012, I'm really surprised they haven't done better. Even adding up their constituant countries to form GB they're still a long way behind, what's going on? Are they leaving their best at home?

Billo, they have in cycling, where they would have been expected to win more than half of the gold medals. But that doesn't explain a lot of the other sports where most of their best are present. I agree I expected a closer overall medal tally.

The English cyclist weren't left at home, they are competing in the European championships which is a qualifier for the World Cycling Championships.

You have to wonder if you went back a few years, tried a little bit harder at a particular sport, if you couldn't give yourself a chance at a medal. We had a 16 year old win gold in rifle shooting the other day. I don't want to trivialise that too much, how many years experience would she realistically have?

Isaac, it depends which suburb she grew up in lol