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Cricket is an Indian game discovered by England
- Frederic Noy


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‘It is a religion here’: India united by shared love of cricket – photo essay

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jun/29/india-cricket-photo-essay-world-cup

Before India’s T20 World Cup final against South Africa, photojournalist Frédéric Noy looks at the role that cricket plays on the sub-continent
Fri 28 Jun 2024 19.16 EDT
Last modified on Sat 29 Jun 2024 10.16 EDT

According to Ashis Nandy, an Indian political psychologist, “cricket is
an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British”. In a 2018
survey, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said as much, estimating
that more than 90% of the world’s one billion cricket fans live on the
Indian subcontinent.

The first appearance of cricket in India dates back to 1721 with a match between English sailors in the port of Cambay, or perhaps further south,
at Tankari Bandar, on the soggy banks of the River Vishwamitri, where
the currents would have forced one of Her Gracious Majesty’s ships to
wait a fortnight for the tide to rise. Regardless of the exact location,
the consensus is that to kill time, the crew played cricket under the
eyes of intrigued and attentive locals. “I read about it in the paper,
and my father and grandfather told me about it. As a child, I knew that
the British had played cricket down by the river in 1721. Cricket was
born in Tankari Bandar,” says village chief Ranjit Sikh with aplomb.

Although it seems that the British had no intention of teaching the laws
of the subtle game to the natives, during the 19th century cricket was
played only by the Indian elite, anxious to curry favour with the
colonisers. This patrician adoption of the game helped it to spread
throughout the country, as well as raising its profile. By the end of
the 19th century, the sport’s status as the preserve of the upper
classes was fading as players from lower castes and disadvantaged
communities began to play and make their mark.

One such player was Palwankar Baloo, a Dalit from the Chamaar caste of
tanners, at the bottom of the Hindu social hierarchy. He was the first
star of Indian cricket, and is now considered a legend – but throughout
his career, which began in 1896, he was never seen as an equal and faced
a great deal of discrimination. For example, at the Pune ground where he
made his debut, at tea time he was brought his beverage in a disposable
cup, which he could not drink with the other players in the pavilion.
His lunch was served at a separate table. If he wanted to wash his face,
a lower-caste assistant would bring him water from the side. At the end
of his career, he became close to Dr Ambedkar, the main drafter of the Constitution and revered leader of the untouchables. Portraits of the
latter hang on the walls of SG (Sanspareils Greenlands), a giant cricket
goods manufacturer in the town of Meerut. The workers, most of whom are
from the lower classes, are a reminder that cricket and social
aspiration are hardly strangers to each other.

But show cricket is not just for the elite. From its very beginnings in
Mumbai (then Bombay), it was popular. Huge crowds turned out to see the
first Parsi and Hindu teams take on their so-called colonial ‘masters,’
and each other. This reflected the time and place: the rapid growth of Bombay’s textile factories gave rise to a new class of organised workers
with a minimum of free time and money. Perhaps it also reflects the hierarchical nature of traditional Indian society …

Over time, cricket infused the fabric of India’s cultural mosaic, to the point of escaping the British Empire by becoming a tool in the struggle
against colonial domination. The pitch was both a theatre of imperial
power and a showcase for Indian resistance. In the context of ‘peaceful’ decolonisation, cricket became the symbolic arena for independence
aspirations, with matches organised against the occupying power serving
to stir up a feeling of unity. In 1947, when independence was
proclaimed, some Anglophobic nationalists called for the disappearance
of the game in the wake of the departure of its promoters. The British
did indeed leave, but cricket remained firmly rooted.

In the early days, a cricket match was played for an unlimited time,
then for five days until the 1970s. In 1975, the first one-day World Cup
was held in England. In 1983, India’s victory triggered an explosion of fervour across the sub-continent that has never abated since.

In the early 2000s, England and Wales introduced a new form of match,
shorter and more rhythmic, to match the duration of other team sports
such as football: Twenty20 (T20), which lasts around three hours. Thanks
to this new format, global cricket enjoyed a fantastic boom. Riding the
T20 wave, the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI), cricket’s governing body, invented the Indian Premier League in 2008, creating
eight teams in the form of franchises sold to the highest bidder. Since
then, 10 teams based in major cities have been vying for the title.

And so, in an irony of history and a keen sense of business, a sport
that was once the exclusive preserve of the colonial elite is now the
national passion of the formerly colonised, enabling India to become the world’s superpower, with two world titles to its name in 1983 and 2011.
It is a passion, an obsession even, that has its roots in a desire for cohesion. “In India, there are different sects, different communities, different language barriers. But cricket is a game that unites everyone
to a certain extent, when it is played together,” explains P S Chari, director of the theatre in Vadodara, a town in Gujarat.
India players celebrate after winning the Cricket World Cup at Lord’s in 1983.
When India first won at Lord's and changed the story of cricket
Read more

The geographical origins of Indian cricket lie in the once vast expanse
of green land at the southern tip of Mumbai. All that remains of the
area, which was once ready for use to fire cannons at the French if they attacked Bombay during the colonial race, are a few maidans – open
spaces used as parade grounds or for events – surrounded by urban development. On a daily basis, these pitches are the breeding ground for
the talents of tomorrow.

“The fact that many of India’s great cricketers come from Mumbai is due
to the tradition of passing on the baton between us, the old players,
and the new generation that we support. It is common to see coaches on
the training grounds and in the academies teaching their technique,
giving advice, revealing their secrets and sharing their experience with
the youngsters,” says the coach Ramesh Vazge, who officiates on the New
Hind at Gymkhana Matunga. A sacred den, a maidan is entered with
devotion. Before they reach adulthood, most players bow to touch the
pitch as a sign of respect after passing through the gate. “In India,
cricket is a veritable religion. One person in two plays. In this
country, it’s more than just a sport,” laughs Khanjan, a young player.

Cricket is the only sport born in the west whose centre has moved to the
Indian subcontinent. This made the home defeat to Australia in the World
Cup final on 19 November 2023, watched by more than 300 million people,
all the more bitter. Fair play to India’s true fans, who recognise that
the performance of the “Men in Blue” (the nickname of the national team) was not up to the standard they had set themselves.

The defeat deprived one spectator of a moment of hubris: the prime
minister, Narendra Modi, whose party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party),
uses the sport “as a vehicle for muscular nationalism”, according to
Sharda Ugra, a journalist with ESPNcricinfo. “Control is exercised not
only through senior officials linked to the ruling party, but also
through the use of Indian cricket to spread their political message,”
she explains. While Modi’s government is not the first to use the sport
for political purposes, his populist party has forged closer links with
the governing body.

Beyond the national horizon, the Olympic Games. In October 2023, at a
meeting in Mumbai, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) approved
the inclusion of cricket in the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. The
organisers proposed a six-team event, but no decision was made on the
final number or qualification arrangements. In fact, it’s not so much
the competition itself that counts, as the hope of helping the Games
reach the three-billion viewer mark. “People don’t really watch the Olympics in South Asia. They know Usain Bolt and that’s it,” says Yash,
a 22-year-old player at England’s famous Slough Cricket Club, who lived
in India until he was 18. “Only well-to-do families watch them, not villagers. But now that cricket has taken off, 100% of people will start watching them.”

The love of the game has already digested the hangover from the lost
final. Enthusiasts, children, teenagers and adults turn up at the crack
of dawn on the maidans, on Juhu beach and in the parks, tirelessly
re-enacting what Indian anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “the indigenisation of cricket”, and recounting how this sport, a vehicle for
the great Victorian values such as loyalty, fair play and self-control,
ended up being totally reappropriated culturally, becoming the herald of
Indian values.

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