Article about politicising cricket
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The roads to the Eden Gardens Stadium were choked with traffic. Hours before India faced their great foes Pakistan in a crucial match in the World Twenty20 in Kolkata, the streets overflowed with fans riding motorbikes draped in the Indian flag. Even in the stultifying heat, thousands queued obligingly for tickets, while the police, some armed with lathis, others with weapons altogether more dangerous, looked sternly on.
“Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British,” the author Ashis Nandy famously wrote. Nowhere is that truer than in T20, the shortest format of cricket, which perfectly tailored to India’s burgeoning middle-class: cash-rich and time poor, and with a craving for celebrity and Indian triumph.
When the match eventually begun, the national anthem brought none of the self-conscious air detectable when many countries sing them. Instead the whole ground rose in unison, bellowing out the words while thousands of Indian tricolor flags waved proudly. Faces painted with the colours of the Indian flag were ubiquitous; so were “I love my India” hats.
Many thousands had their smart phones out to record the moment for posterity: Indian national pride meeting Indian commerce. “National identities are commercial playthings,” the author Mike Marquesee observed two decades ago when covering the 1996 Cricket World Cup in the subcontinent. So it is in India in 2016.
In six years, India will become the most populous nation on earth. Yet, like the Commonwealth Games in 2010, the WT20 has raised serious concerns about India’s ability to host global events. The schedule was only announced on December 11, less than three months before the start of the tournament, while tickets did not go on sale until two weeks before the first match and have seldom been available to buy at the ground. At an early match in Nagpur, Scotland fans were told they had to go to the city’s old stadium, 18km away, to get tickets.