It is not less than a year when world stopped to watch world cup soccer that resulted in sluggish stocks and huge economic losses during the game month is now effecting some countries economically with world cup cricket that will be played in West Indies for a month. Here are some of those loss estimates

• DNAIndia reports that World Cup Cricket 2007: $521 Million Loss in British Economic Productivity.
• Cricket World Cup to lose Australian businesses $371 million – the report says “if one in 10 of Australia’s 10 million employed people (according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics) with an average $27.30 hourly rate, spend 30 minutes a day catching up on the World Cup for the 27 working days the tournament is played, the results will be more than 13.5 million hours of lost productivity. This will also cost Australian businesses up to $371 million in lost productivity.
• World Cup to stump Pak economy -”With the timing of the matches scheduled between 6:30 pm and 2:30 am according to Pakistan Standard Time, attendance in offices, trading companies and stock exchange is expected to be affected specially on days of big matches”

How is India handling the productivity issues ? India Soaps advertisers are now cutting back ad spending in soaps to channel that money into cricket sending worrying signals to booming India soap industry.The mainstream India is still not catching up with the rest of world where watching a game at sports bar with a beer or two is quite a common thing, Few companies that anticipated this change are running into inventory issues.Lastly but not least by any means the largest India IT work force now being dubbed as back office of world will have serious productivity issues that might effect the rest of the world once India starts playing on March 19.