Heroic Welcome Awaits the Indian T20 World Cup-winning Team.

 

Heroic Welcome Awaits the Indian T20 World Cup-winning Team.

The connection between Cricket and Political Class in India

The T20 World Cup-winning Indian team landed in India this morning. It will await a heroic welcome, which will commence with the team meeting with the Honourable Prime Minister. This will be followed by an open motor car ride for the team to a thunderous welcome in the city of Mumbai, which will remind us of those nostalgic memories of 2007 when India won its last T20 World Cup and the team received a mega welcome back to India in the city of Mumbai on an open car cavalcade.

The Heroic welcome back to India for the 2024, T20 World Cup-winning team was delayed due to the disruption in the travel plans of the team owing to Hurricane Beryl which struck West Indies. India's T20 Cricket World Cup winning team finally left West Indies yesterday by a special Air India charter flight AIC24WC - Air India Champions 24 World Cup – which had taken off from Bridgetown, Barbados around 4:50 a.m. local time on July 3 and arrived in Delhi this morning at 6 AM after a 16-hour non-stop journey. Even before the team met the PM, politics started immediately after the PM spoke to the winning team and congratulated them for their brilliant performance all through the tournament, special in the final match which they won against South Africa in a nail-biting finish.

The connection of Cricket with political class is not new in India. From its colonial origins to modern times, Indian cricket has carried the influence and power that politicians crave. It is not unusual to see political leaders harvest the benefits of the popularity of the game for their party's advantage.  Moreover, post the 1983 World Cup Victory and the dominance of India in the international Cricket administration, the political class is not only using cricket to connect with people but they have also taken over the running of the game in India, whether it is through a direct role at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) or through proxy figures. Therefore, it will be unfair for the opposition to politicise the congratulatory message of the Indian PM to team India or his meeting with the Indian team. Be it Pt Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Man Mohan Singh, or PM Modi, Sonia Gandhi, every one of them has had their share of hosting the Indian cricket team, which has populated social media.

Incidentally, I used this concept while curating two Cricket Connects exhibitions – Cricket Connects India – Australia and Cricket Connects India – UK – which were showcased in Australia in 2016 and in three cities in England in 2017, respectively. It was on July 3, 2017, that this exhibition was opened in Birmingham, an image of this accompanies this post. One of the sections in these two exhibitions was “Cricket and Indian National Consciousness”.

Cricket and Indian Cinema are the two main mass mediums, which besides providing entertainment, arouse passion, and nationalism and arguably also unite every section of the Indian society. Both Cricket and Bollywood transcend class and religious boundaries throughout the Indian subcontinent. Every Indian, irrespective of age and gender is fairly well-informed about the game of cricket and they come together to support their team with heightened patriotic feelings.  Bollywood exploited the links between nationalism and cricket with the movie Lagaan – Ashutosh Gowariker's Academy Award-nominated film. The film portrays a pre-independent India that depicts cricket as the unifying factor in developing the idea of a Nation and attempts to form a national consciousness.

Many scholars who have written on the rise of cricket in India have argued that the game is naturally suited to the Indian consciousness. Ashis Nandy, one of the scholars, goes a step further and comments that “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.”  One of the main factors in the ever-growing link between cricket and National consciousness has been the political classes. Even before cricket took over from hockey as the most popular sport in India, Indian politicians have used this game to broaden their appeal. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, played cricket and his daughter Indira Gandhi, also the Prime Minister of India, used photos of her father striding out to bat, and dressed in his cricket whites, on political pamphlets during the Emergency of 1975 for reaching out to the cricket crazy Indians.

Cricket in India reflects or maintains a strong collective psychology of the masses which gives rise to collective identities. Cricket has also been used to achieve political motivation. It is therefore no wonder that the Indian political class and the leaders have always been supportive of this game and at varying times the Indian leadership, across the range of the political spectrum, have always supported the game and have taken pride in hosting cricket players. Several cricket boards in India, including the all-powerful BCCI, have innate connections with the political class. Be it Indira Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi, Man Mohan Singh, every one of them has had their tryst with the Indian Cricket team.

Some analysts argue that the relationship between Cricket and politics in India is mutually beneficial; Cricket needs politicians in India to get money and to overcome the red tape, bureaucratic problems, and issues and politicians use cricket and the players, who are idolised by the Indians, as a means of gaining popularity. It is not that this linkage is a post-independence or post-1983 phenomenon. The links between Cricket and our leaders were developed even before Independence. The BCCI was formed by the Maharajahs of the Princely States, and cricket boards have always been supported by the most powerful people in the area.

Another crucial factor that has increased the link between cricket and national consciousness is the popularity of the game post the 1983 Prudential World Cup which the Indians most unexpectedly won. India by then had just begun its colour transmission, on the National TV Channel, Doordarshan, with the opening of the Asian Games in Delhi in 1982.  The economic liberalization that began in 1991 was a blessing in disguise for the popularity of the game. One of the major sectors which were benefitted from the economic liberalization included the Television Industry, which was deregulated in 1993 leading to an exponential rise in the private TV Channels. The success in the World Cup in 1983, ten years earlier, combined with the spread of new television stations brought cricket to whole new audiences throughout India. The Indian audience could now view their favourite sports sitting in the comforts of their living rooms.

The Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch's Star Sports and ESPN channels became the mainstay for bringing cricket to an ever-widening audience. Radio, and more particularly television, and in recent times, the Internet, has helped make cricket the most popular game in India. Men, women, and children who were inimical to the game and had no interest in cricket earlier have now become ardent fans – all because of its broadcast by radio, television, and the Internet. The One Day Cricket (50 overs game) and the T20 and IPL on television are a boon for advertisers because commercials can be shown every five minutes or so, after each over. This, combined with the need for new channels to fill their schedules, meant more and more matches being shown. Multinational Corporations (MNCs) entered India as the Indian economy opened up and they needed brand ambassadors with whom the population identified. Cricket players provided the perfect vehicle for this growth which in turn boosted the popularity of the star players. MNCs have exploited the subcontinent's love of cricket, and also of Bollywood. Using movie stars and cricketers to advertise their products, MNCs gained an extraordinary reach in the subcontinent – in India, billboards with cricketers like Tendulkar or Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan holding a Pepsi or Coca-Cola became ubiquitous. 

With time the effects of economic liberalization brought in 'big money' and a proportion of the population had more and more money to spend. The developments also brought about a growing middle class who became the prime movers of national consciousnesses. The ever-growing middle classes in India are the standard bearers of nationalism and encourage the links between cricket and national consciousness.  The media has deepened this link between cricket and nationalism. This hyper-nationalism comes to the fore particularly when India plays Pakistan in cricket, which was witnessed when India played Pakistan in the league T20 World Cup and also during the ICC World Cup 2023 which was played in India at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad. In the run-up to the India/Pakistan matches the media goes into overdrive portraying this as a virtual war of some sort.

As India continues to dominate the world of cricket so will be the potential for the political class to continue to be connected with the game of Cricket. Who wins or loses or whether both win, is for the people to decide and so be it.

Images: Courtesy Getty and Internet

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