At four square kilometers, the Maidan in Kolkata is considered the largest public park in India. Dozens of cricket matches take place simultaneously on bumpy lawns. Youth leagues, family celebrations, company team tournaments. “The Maidan is the center of our greatest passion,” says former professional player Ambar Roy, who now coaches a youth team. “We adore cricket. In India you can’t ignore this game.”
Ambar Roy sits on a garden chair and pulls his hat over his face. His players brush the dust off their long pants and swarm the field. Most of them grew up in the countryside and hope for a lucrative professional career in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta. “Who are the celebrities in our country?” asks Ambar Roy. “Movie stars, politicians and cricketers.” Now they are hoping for a further boost: from Thursday, India will host the Cricket World Cup for six weeks. Five games are scheduled to take place in eastern India in Kolkata, one of the ten venues.
From the playing fields on the Maidan it is a ten-minute walk to Eden Gardens. The facade of the third largest cricket stadium in the world is decorated with paintings. It shows fans looking up in awe at their sports heroes. Sealed jerseys and gold-framed photos hang in the catacombs. Snehasish Ganguly also has his office here. The official saw his first games at Eden Gardens as a schoolboy in the early 1980s. Back then, he says, people stood in line for hours for tickets. Games lasted almost all day. “We ate breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack at the stadium.”
“We have a good amount of money at our disposal,” says the president of the West Bengal association – “a very good amount”
Snehasish Ganguly sits behind a massive desk in a white shirt. Behind him hang paintings with cricket motifs. Ganguly is honorary president of the West Bengal Cricket Association, the state where Kolkata is the capital. In his day job, he runs a multi-million dollar packaging company. Officials like him make it clear how interconnected cricket is with the economy in India. “We have a good amount of money at our disposal,” he says and smiles. “A very good sum.”
The most important cricket league in the world, the Indian Premier League IPL, recently recorded an annual turnover of almost eleven billion US dollars. Only the American football league NFL generated more sales in global sports, around 18 billion. The sale of media rights alone will secure $6.4 billion for the IPL and its ten clubs over the next five years. The biggest sponsors of the league, founded in 2008, include a steel company, a financial app and a provider of online training. And state-owned companies from the Gulf states are pushing into the Indian cricket market from abroad. Your target group? Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar together are home to more than ten million Indian migrant workers.
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In India, cricketers like Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja adorn the stadium walls – they are role models for children.
(Photo: Punit Paranjpe /AFP)
“Cricket is the perfect stage for our companies to achieve reach,” says Snehasish Ganguly. It used to be novels and Bollywood films in which cricket played a role. Today in stadiums there are shows with light drones and dance choreographies, ideal for distribution on social media. As early as 2010, IPL games were broadcast on YouTube, also targeting the more than 30 million people of Indian origin who do not live in India. The special thing about the IPL is that it only lasts two months in the spring. “The clubs buy the best players in the world in auctions every year,” says Snehasish Ganguly. “Our teams are constantly changing.”
In colonial times, cricket was also a tool of control
From Eden Gardens it is a 40-minute walk to the southern tip of the Maidan. The “Victoria Memorial”, a white building with marble floors, outside stairs and a dome, is located in a well-tended garden with palm trees and statues. One can easily imagine the British colonial rulers, who had established a trading post in Kolkata from the late 17th century, playing cricket in their white trousers. “The British wanted to keep fit in a tropical climate,” says historian Kausik Bandyopadhyay. “But cricket was also a tool of control.”
In the eyes of the colonial rulers, the Indians were too “effeminate” for their “gentlemanly sports”. But in order to administer the vast subcontinent, the few thousand British officials and soldiers had to secure the support of Indian mercenaries and princes. Over time, a small Indian elite was allowed to play cricket. The British spoke of the “White Man’s Burden” of helping the supposedly backward people. This is one of the reasons why the freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi later viewed the rapid spread of cricket rather critically.
Meanwhile, cricket is probably the only legacy of the colonial era that is revered across religions and castes in India. That’s why it’s likely that Narendra Modi will use the World Cup as a stage, says Kausik Bandyopadhyay. The Indian Prime Minister has hosted state guests at cricket several times during his time in office. For example, last March: the Indian national team welcomed Australia in Ahmedabad, in the west of the country. Before the game, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Modi took a victory lap. There was a message on her car: “Friendship through cricket.” Both governments agreed on closer cooperation.
The opening game takes place in an explosive location
Ahmedabad’s 132,000-seat cricket stadium is the largest in the world and bears the name of Narendra Modi. The arena is in the state of Gujarat, where Modi was the head of government until 2014. In 2002, Modi is said to have watched idly as several hundred Muslims were killed in pogroms. With the strengthening of his Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, hostilities against Muslims have increased. The most explosive World Cup game is scheduled to take place in Ahmedabad on October 14th, between the feuding neighbors India and Pakistan.
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The New Zealand cricket team is preparing for the start of the World Cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
(Foto: Andrew Boyers/Reuters)
In the recent past, the relationship between the nuclear powers has been very tense. One of the reasons: In 2008, a series of attacks by Pakistani Islamists in Mumbai cost more than 160 people their lives. Since then, Pakistani players have not been welcome in the Indian cricket league. And even now, before the World Cup, the Pakistani players only received their visas a few hours before departure. On Friday they had to play a friendly against New Zealand in Hyderabad, India, without an audience. Apparently their safety is at risk.
Now at the World Cup, Pakistan is scheduled to play two games in Kolkata, the former capital of British India. Tournaments like these also shed light on the post-colonial relationship between Britain and its former territories. Of the ten participating World Cup nations, only the Netherlands was not under British influence during the colonial period.
You can also get a glimpse of this story on College Street, north of Kolkata. Merchants spread out their book tables on narrow sidewalks. There are magazines about cricket in shops. For example, about the 1983 World Cup, when India won the title for the first time in England, of all places. Or about the stadium in Kolkata, which will soon be 160 years old. On several occasions fans have set fires in Eden Gardens because they were angry after defeats. But also because they couldn’t control their enthusiasm after victories.
