Mural at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai: In India, anticipation for the Cricket World Cup is increasing.
Photo: AFP/R. Satish BABU
Narrow streets with heavy traffic characterize the central business district of Kolkata. Blaring horns, crowded sidewalks. India’s third largest metropolitan area will soon have 20 million inhabitants. The mixture of dust, smog and the smell of gasoline makes it difficult to breathe. But a few hundred meters further, on the Maidan, the hustle and bustle of the megacity is far away.
At four square kilometers, the Maidan is considered the largest public park in India. The lawns, scorched by the strong sunlight, fill up in the afternoon. Children, young people and adults mark out playing fields for cricket with jackets and backpacks. Dozens of games take place at the same time. 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 worship cricket. There’s no getting around this game.”
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Ambar Roy sits on a garden chair with his back arched and pulls his hat over his face. His players brush the dust off their long pants and swarm onto the field. Most of them grew up in the countryside and were discovered by talent scouts. Here in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, they are hoping for a breakthrough and a lucrative professional career. “A billion-dollar industry has emerged around cricket,” says Ambar Roy. »Who are the celebrities in our country? – Movie stars, politicians and cricketers.” Roy wants to keep his players’ hope alive, but he also tells them that only a few make it to the top.
During a break, the youth players sit together and watch the professional league videos on their cell phones. Their anticipation is great because the Cricket World Cup starts on October 5th. India is hosting the tournament, which premiered in 1975, alone for the first time. “Everyone has been looking forward to this event for months,” says Ambar Roy. “We’re hoping for a big boost.” Five World Cup games are scheduled to take place in eastern India in Kolkata, in one of the ten venues.
From the bumpy playing fields on the Maidan, it’s a ten-minute walk to the northern edge of the park. Here is Eden Gardens, the third largest cricket stadium in the world, with a capacity of 66,000 spectators. The facade is decorated with paintings. It shows fans looking up in awe at their sports heroes. Sealed jerseys, gold-framed photos and plaques of historical events hang in the catacombs. Cricket was played on the Eden Gardens site as early as the 1860s, an import from the British colonial era. Since then the site has been expanded and rebuilt, enlarged and renovated. And with every decade the stadium’s importance grew. The World Cup is now the next chapter.
Cricket official Snehasish Ganguly 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 an afternoon snack at the stadium.«
Snehasish Ganguly has a large office in the catacombs of Eden Gardens. Paintings with cricket motifs hang on the walls. Ganguly sits behind a massive desk in a white shirt. He 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 Snehasish Ganguly make it clear how connected cricket is to the economy in India. “We have a good amount of money at our disposal,” he says and smiles. »A very good sum.«
Snehasish Ganguly is talking about the Indian Premier League IPL, the most important cricket league in the world, founded in 2008. The sale of media rights alone will secure the IPL and its ten clubs $6.4 billion over the next five years. A group of companies paid almost a billion dollars to be able to set up a new “franchise” in Lucknow, northern India. The largest league sponsors include a steel company, a financial app and an online training provider. And state-owned companies from the Gulf states are pushing into the Indian cricket market from abroad. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar together are home to more than ten million migrant workers from India.
In any case, the Indian Premier League has developed into one of the world’s most lucrative sports industries: the North American National Football League (NFL) recently recorded annual sales of $18 billion. The IPL is already in second place with 10.9 billion. The first European football league, the English Premier League, follows in fifth place with a turnover of 5.3 billion dollars.
“Cricket is the perfect stage for our companies to achieve reach,” says entrepreneur Snehasish Ganguly. There used to be novels and Bollywood films in which cricket played a role. Today, stadiums host shows with light drones and dance choreography, ideal for sharing on social media. Back in 2010, the IPL was the first sports league to be broadcast on YouTube, also targeting the 32 million people of Indian origin who do not live in India. What’s special about the IPL is that it only lasts two months in the spring, with just 74 games. The clubs buy the best players from all over the world in auctions every year, sometimes for millions.
With economic success, the political importance of cricket also grows, as an example from March makes clear: in Ahmedabad, in the west of the country, the Indian national team hosted Australia in a test match. Before the game, a car with a platform drove around the field. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood on it and waved to the audience. There was a message on the cart: “Friendship through cricket.” Both governments agreed on closer cooperation.
The Ahmedabad Stadium is the largest cricket stadium in the world with 132,000 seats and has been named after Narendra Modi since 2021. The arena is in the state of Gujarat, where Modi was head of government until 2014. In 2002, Modi is said to have watched idly as several hundred Muslims were killed in pogroms. In the political climate of his Hindu nationalist ruling party, the BJP, hostilities against Muslims have increased. The most explosive World Cup game is now scheduled to take place in Ahmedabad on October 14th, between the feuding neighbors India and Pakistan.
The conflicts in India are also reflected in cricket, says historian Kausik Bandyopadhyay, who has written books about politics and sport in India. In 1947, what was once Great Britain’s largest colony gained its independence. The subcontinent was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan. More than a million people are said to have died in escapes and excessive violence. Nevertheless, the new Pakistani cricket team played in India for the first time in 1952. Thousands of spectators received visas for the country from which they were once expelled.
But advances were followed by escalations. In 1991, before a match between India and Pakistan, Indian nationalists dug up the pitch in Mumbai and forced it to be relocated. Sometimes test matches were banned by governments for years, for example during the Indo-Pakistani wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999. “But the potential for income from sponsors and TV marketing is so enormous that they want to keep the sporting rivalry alive,” says Kausik Bandyopadhyay. In politically difficult times, test matches between India and Pakistan took place on neutral ground, for example in Toronto or Dubai.
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 their planned departure. On Friday, the Pakistan team had to play a preparatory game against New Zealand in Hyderabad, India, without an audience. Apparently their safety is at risk.
During the World Cup, the Pakistan team will also be visiting Kolkata, the former capital of British India, for two games. On the southern edge of the Maidan is the “Victoria Memorial”, a white building with marble floors, outside stairs and a dome. One can easily imagine how the British colonial rulers, who set up a trading post in Calcutta from the late 17th century, played cricket in their white trousers. “The British wanted to stay fit and healthy in a tropical climate,” says researcher Kausik Bandyopadhyay. »But cricket was also an instrument of control.«
In the eyes of the colonial rulers, the Indians were too “effeminate” for the “gentleman’s sport” of cricket. But to administer the vast subcontinent, the few thousand British officials and soldiers had to rely on the support of Indian mercenaries. Over time, this small Indian elite was allowed to play cricket, a move up the social hierarchy. The British spoke of the “white man’s burden” of helping the backward. This is also why the freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi later viewed the spread of cricket critically.
Nowadays, cricket is perhaps the only legacy of the colonial era that is fully revered in India, across religious, caste and social divides. You can get a glimpse of it on College Street, north of Kolkata. Merchants spread out their book tables on narrow sidewalks. There are also magazines about cricket in shops. For example, about the 1983 World Cup in England, when India won the title for the first time in the country of the former colonial power. Or about the venerable stadium in Kolkata. 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. Eden Gardens will soon be 160 years old. Young enough for the next World Cup.
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