Cricket: a thoroughly Indian sport

Nowhere loves cricket more than India, where it also helps unify a nation fractured by ethnic divisions and mend relations with neighbouring Pakistan. Or at least it did until the advent of the BJP.

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‘An Indian game accidentally discovered by the British’ Nowhere loves cricket more than India, where it also helps unify a nation fractured by ethnic divisions and mend relations with neighbouring Pakistan. Or at least it did until the advent of the BJP. In November 2023 India was spellbound by the Cricket World Cup, held in ten venues across the country. Throughout this vast land, even its remotest parts, hundreds of millions of Indians celebrated their favourite sport, whose popularity far exceeds that of football. A lucky minority attended matches in person, but most Indians followed the exploits of their national team, captained by Virat Kohli, on subscription television channels. Kohli, who is idolised like a Bollywood star, was everywhere on billboards and television programmes, and his fans seized any opportunity to show their devotion, as on 5 November, his birthday, when India defeated South Africa in Kolkata. Ecstatic supporters in the stands at Eden Gardens stadium waved a banner that read, ‘Virat, long life to the mother who gave birth to you’. Frenzied fans screamed ‘Happy birthday, King Kohli’ into TV cameras. There were close-ups of him signing autographs and greeting children, like a politician on a campaign. Images of Kohli mixing with the crowd played endlessly on Disney’s Star Sports 1 and 2, which broadcast the World Cup. The day before, in Bangalore, capital of the southwestern state of Karnataka, huge queues had formed around Chinnaswamy stadium, where New Zealand were about to take on Pakistan. A tunic seller was loudly touting his wares, particularly NZ shirts. ‘What about Pakistan shirts?’ I asked. ‘I’m not allowed to,’ the youthful seller muttered, looking down. A bystander added: ‘I’m not for New Zealand or Pakistan. But I wouldn’t buy a Pakistan shirt. New Zealand’s very popular here.’ By implication, Pakistan isn’t. Cricket originated in England in the 16th century and by the 18th century had become an aristocratic sport par excellence. ‘It is no exaggeration to suggest that cricket came closer than any other public form to distilling, constituting, and communicating the values of the Victorian upper classes in England to English gentlemen as part of their embodied (…) David Garcia (1) Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. All quotations from Appadurai are from this book. (2) Stephen Wagg, Cricket: a Political History of the Global Game, 1945-2017, Routledge, London, 2018. All quotations from Wagg are from this source. (3) Followers of Zoroastrianism, the Parsis emigrated from Persia to India in the tenth century. (4) Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field: the Indian history of a British sport, Picador, London, 2003. (5) ‘Dalit man’s finger chopped off in Gujarat after his nephew touches cricket ball’, 6 June 2023, scroll.in/. (6) Mohit Anand, ‘Geopolitics of cricket in India’ in Simon Chadwick, Paul Widdop and Michael M Goldman (eds), The Geopolitical Economy of Sport: Power, Politics, Money, and the State, Routledge, 2023. (7) See Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘India: democracy in name only?’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, April 2024. (8) ‘Amnesty International: fans arrested in India for cheering Pakistan win “must be freed” ’, The Guardian, London, 21 June 2017. (9) Sharda Ugra, ‘Shah’s playground: BJP’s control of cricket in India’, The Caravan, 31 August 2023. Quotations from Ugra come either from this article or my interview with her. (10) ‘Ashish Shelar thanks Modi, Shah after being elected as BCCI treasurer’, The Times of India, New Delhi, 18 October 2022. (11) ‘La diplomatie du cricket œuvre à nouveau entre l’Inde et le Pakistan’ (Cricket diplomacy working again between India and Pakistan), Le Monde, Paris, 28 March 2011. (12) Avipsu Halder, ‘Capitalism and the ethics of sport governance: A history of the board of control for cricket in India’, Sport in Society, vol 24, no 8, Taylor & Francis, London, 2021, www.tandfonline.com/. (13) Pradeep Magazine, Not Just Cricket: a Reporter’s Journey through Modern India, HarperCollins India, New Delhi, 2021. (14) Quoted in Anand op cit.

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