The West Indies are taking on India at the moment in a country where cricket is the greatest uniting force
CRICKET: Mike Marqusee
`THERE is simply nothing in cricket which matters more than a series for the Ashes,” declares Christopher Martin- Jenkins, the authorised voice of English cricket’s ancien regime, in his new anthology, The Spirit of Cricket. To which Ramachandra Guha, a critical celebrant of modern Indian cricket, has delivered the inevitable retort: “This is 1994, not 1894.”
Certainly this winter’s Ashes series between England and Australia is unlikely to produce any crowds to compare with the 110 000 who turned out in Calcutta’s Eden Gardens on November 5 to watch India whip West Indies under huge floodlights, amid swarms of insects, to the booming accompaniment of a barrage of fireworks.
The English old guard who have banned banners, placards, bugles and drums from most of England’s Test grounds, would have turned apoplectic at the scene in Calcutta, where banners and placards proliferated (encouraged by the sponsors, who provide cardboard) and bugles and drums were swelled by the exploding crackers and awesome din of an Indian cricket crowd conversing with itself at top volume (and without the aid of booze).
This was one-day pyjama cricket with a vengeance. Coloured clothing, white ball, black sight screens and sponsors’ logos everywhere. Indian cricket these days is big money and big politics, and everyone wants a piece of the action.
The Calcutta match was sponsored by tobacco firms, unit trusts, banks, manufacturers of soft drinks, whisky, sunglasses, motorcycles, steel, cement, chemicals and chocolate bars. After the match, amid a sea of blazing newspaper torches and sulphurous smoke clouds, the winner’s trophy was presented to the Indian side by West Bengal’s “Marxist” chief minister, Jyoti Basu, just back from a tour of the United States promoting the attractions of his state’s new policy of deregulation and privatisation.
The following day the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) unveiled an Stg 8-million deal with an Indian-based tobacco giant for the title sponsorship of the next World Cup, to be jointly hosted (over anguished English objections) by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in early 1996. This comes on top of a minimum Stg 10-million guaranteed deal for television rights to the Cup with US-based World Tel.
When fees from merchandising and other marketing initiatives are added in, the Indian board expects to turn in a profit of Stg 20-million, making the event the biggest money-spinner in the sport’s history.
A major international match in India is a rich and multi- faceted affair, at once popular festival, elite social occasion and global media event. Gladiatorial contest, nationalist jamboree, commercial venture, artistic performance, symbol of national unity, source of communal and international discord, Indian cricket is all these, and more.
Well informed, sometimes acerbic, usually generous to opponents and always ebulliently partisan, an Indian cricket crowd in full cry is one of the great sights and sounds in the world of sport. Applause for a century or wicket takes the form of rhythmic clapping in unison. But, even in this dense throng, there is room for the individual voice.
Scattered throughout the stands, self-appointed commentators and comedians make references to pop songs and political events. Hand-written placards display an array of messages from the banal (“North South East West, Azhar is the Best”), to the sympathetic (“Don’t Cry Courtney Walsh”), to the offensive (“India fight with Nazi spirit”), to the sardonic (“Kapil sanyassin” — a reference to the great all-rounder entering the final stage of life, in which, according to Hindu tradition, one walks away from all stress).
Cricket is ubiquitous in India. In narrow slum streets, village maidans, posh suburbs and cluttered middle class housing blocks, boys and young men play the game in all kinds of awkward spaces with whatever implements come to hand. Wherever one looks, one sees testimonies both to the marvellous adaptability of the venerable game and the sheer enthusiasm for it among young Indians.
Keylong, district headquarters in the remote northern region of Lahaul, boasts some 5 000 inhabitants, a mixture of indigenous Himalayan people, Tibetans, Nepalis, Kashmiris and Indians from the plains and the south. On all sides, huge ice-capped mountains dwarf the town, which straggles along a high ridge. Across the valley, an ancient Buddhist gompa is visible. As dusk settles, a group of boys gather in a wind-racked open space behind the town’s international telephone exchange satellite dish to play a game of single wicket cricket on a concrete semi-circle backed by a plaster wall on which they have chalked a wicket.
The ball is nothing but a cracked plastic sphere, the bat a round stick. But with these makeshift tools, the mountain youth do their best to practise a sophisticated art. Batsmen essay on-drives, square cuts, leg glances. Bowlers unveil uncanny imitations of Kapil Dev and Anil Kumble. The game is interrupted when the leg-spinner is hit over mid-on — that is, over the plaster wall. Luckily, the ball is retrieved before it gets very far down the mountain side towards the valley bottom some 1 000m below.
The game has no pedigree here and the nearest proper cricket pitch is 480km away. These boys learned their stuff watching big cricket on television. Satellite dishes have sprouted over a number of homes in Keylong and that means the Hong Kong-based Star TV (now owned by Rupert Murdoch) is beaming international pop culture into the region. In all probability, these kids watch The Simpsons. One can’t help but wonder just what kind of cricket they will be playing in a generation’s time.
Cricket touches every community in India, and in doing so is unique. For those who would wield influence in Indian society, this makes it a honey-pot. Today, the Indian elite presides over the people’s game with a shameless zest for money, patronage and power reminiscent of the English aristocrats who first formalised cricket in the late 18th century, before the Victorian ideologists encased the game in a puritanical code. In the words of cricket historian Mihir Bose, Indian cricket, like the film industry, “mixes glamour and money”. It is not only popular; it is fashionable. Big cricket fixtures are places to see and be seen, to display and celebrate wealth, social prestige and political clout.
Journalists in Madras estimated that 10 percent of the capacity 50 000 crowd attending a recent one-day international against West Indies were in the ground thanks to complimentary tickets handed out by the match host, the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. The dissemination of freebies is an important part of the Indian cricket scene, an index of status for both giver and receiver.
One of the city’s more venerable institutions, the Madras Race Course, was so incensed at a TNCA decision to reduce its customary quota of comps that it pursued the matter in the High Court, which duly directed the TNCA to issue the Race Course with additional freebies. The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board didn’t bother with legal appeals. It subjected the cricket stadium in Madras to a series of power cuts until it was issued with extra tickets.
Under its Thatcherite New Economic Policy, India is trying to sell itself as the mega-market of the 21st century, and cricket is the ideal vehicle through which to reach its 100-million strong, increasingly affluent and aspirant middle class, especially the young. When college youth, the consumers of the future, were asked by the news magazine India Today, “Who is your role model?” 25 percent cited Rajiv Gandhi (a dead man), while the most frequently cited living person was the Indian cricket captain, Mohammed Azharuddin (a Muslim), with 14 percent.
Sponsors queue up to contribute to the BCCI’s coffers because of Indian cricket’s trendy, high-status image. Where in England the retired Geoff Boycott goes on television to advertise vitamin supplements for older folk, his coeval, Sunil Gavaskar, models suave and worldly menswear. A pony-tailed Kapil Dev — icon of power, performance and modernity — sells the latest line of Bajaj motorbikes.
When Pepsi arrived in India a few years back, after decades of exclusion, it was quick to enlist cricket in its highly successful campaign to penetrate the Indian market. The multinational now sponsors one-day internationals, as well as several domestic competitions, and its advertisements show young cricket stars Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli in snappy casual attire, boogeying to the latest beat on their personal stereos. This is the Pepsi generation, Indian style, and big cricket is its natural habitat.
There are critics in India who decry the current domination of one-day cricket and the BCCI’s obsession with money. But board officials have a ready answer. The one-day game, they argue, is easier to package and promote than the traditional three-to-five day affair. Besides, it helps resolve one of the BCCI’s thorniest dilemmas: how to respond to demands from its 31 state and city-based affiliates for an annual dose of big cricket.
The BCCI roadshow this autumn will bring international cricket to 17 different cities in all corners of the country. And every match will be packed. Never mind that the domestic first-class game is watched by an even smaller public than its counterpart in England, or that the game’s grassroots survive, with little help from state or private sector, thanks largely to massive voluntary initiative and the sheer bloody-minded determination of millions to play the game no matter how poor the facilities.
In addition to its vast internal following, Indian cricket enjoys an audience throughout the Indian diaspora — in North America, Europe, South-east Asia, South Africa and Australia. Liberalisation has meant a new emphasis on the role of non-resident Indians in the economy, and cricket, through satellite and cable, is a means of linking up with them. Indian companies now sponsor Indian cricket, in the words of one marketing director, “to emphasise their global ambitions”.
Indian cricket is thus becoming not merely a fusion between English and Indian experiences but a meeting place for India and the new transnational media market.
In India, the cliche about cricket is that it unites a nation riven by religious, caste and regional tensions. The make-up of the current side, in which all major religions and most regions are represented, would seem to confirm this old saw. On the other hand, a number of cricket stars — Chetan Chauhan, Kirti Azad, Mohinder Amarnath — have turned to politics in recent years under the aegis of the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party. The president of the powerful Bombay Cricket Association, and vice-president of the BCCI, is Manohar Joshi, a high-ranking official of the Shiv Sena, a semi-fascist, virulently anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani party based in the Western state of Maharashtra.
India have not played a series against Pakistan for five years — despite the fact that a cricket clash between the two nations is the biggest sports draw in the sub-continent — because of threats from Hindu extremists to sabotage the matches. The BCCI itself boycotted the Sharjah tournament in the Gulf for several years in protest against alleged “Muslim bias”. All this might be thought to presage disaster for the World Cup, especially given the current tensions between the governments of India and Pakistan.
But even the most die-hard communal agitator will think twice before disrupting an event in which so many hundreds of millions have invested so much feeling. In this case the raw love of cricket can be expected to prevail over religious bigotry and geopolitical rivalry.
* Mike Marqusee’s book, Anyone But England (Verso Stg 16.95), has just been shortlisted for the William Hill sports book of the year award.