The 1996 World Cup was messy, exciting, confusing, frustrating, charming, and a marketing World Cup when cricket didn’t know the term yet.
Four years earlier, in Australia, it had been a worthy tournament with a sensible format; three years later in England Indian advertisers took over the grounds deciding that it didn’t matter where the World Cup was played so long as it was brought live to Indian audiences with messages from Indian advertisers for Indian products. 1996 was a turning point.
A game associated with English villages became television’s favourite in the subcontinent. The match was no longer played over 22 yards, but 22 inches (and more) of the television screen.
Getting it wrong!
The earlier World Cup in India in 1987 had been among the last of the innocent ones, the focus on the competition. Venues and flights were planned well, and the only miscalculation the organisers made was in assuming that India would play Pakistan in the final. Both hosts were knocked out in the semifinals leaving England to play Australia and leading to the latter’s first triumph.
1996 better reflected the ethos of the hosts. In his delightful account of the tournament, the late Mike Marqusee put his finger on it. He said he “realised that sub-continental cricket was not a quaint legacy of the Raj but something new and vital ... now unrivalled as the national sport in all three countries.” Pakistan and Sri Lanka were co-hosts. The country had taken something foreign to themselves and thoroughly localised it — cricket’s success in the countries where it has been successful has been built on such localization. Think of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, South Africa — the game is the same, but the approach and attitude to it is unique to these countries.
It was the World Cup of the official sponsors and ambush marketing. There was a “chewing gum of the World Cup” and a glimpse into the global cola wars. Coke were the “official” sponsors, but Pepsi ran a successful nose-thumbing campaign saying there was nothing official about their drink implying either that nobody cared which drink was official and everybody only drank Pepsi or that only bores and stiff-necked people drank the official stuff anyway. In its review, Wisden felt that “ the cricket was secondary to the commercialism,” and it is difficult to argue with that assessment.
The combination of liberalisation and the rise of Sachin Tendulkar (that is a simplification, but there is a kernel of truth in it) had given the middle classes a hero to admire and an avenue for its disposable income.
Memorable moments
Lovely batting by Mark Waugh and Tendulkar, and in the final two games by Aravinda da Silva apart from the destructive batsmanship at the top by Sanath Jayasuriya made it all memorable.
In Bangalore, Wasim Akram pulled out, and India beat Pakistan. The streets outside the cricket stadium were packed the previous night as touts made a killing; but there were those who had come just to enjoy the “pre-match atmosphere” as one of them told me.
My travelling companion for part of the World Cup was Marqusee, the American-born cricket lover and Indophile (he described himself as a “deracinated New York Marxist Jew”) who saw farther and deeper than most and yet never lost his sense of humour. We supported the same team — Sri Lanka, who were playing a brand of exciting cricket and had, in Aravinda, a magnificent batsman.
Just days before the tournament began, a bombing in Colombo threw Australia and West Indies off their game; they decided to forfeit their matches in Sri Lanka. It might have focused the country’s support for their national team, especially after a combined India-Pakistan team visited to play a match to show, as Wasim Akram said, “We have no fears of any security in Sri Lanka.” A team which included Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, Akram, Saeed Anwar, Mohammad Azharuddin beat a Sri Lankan eleven.
In Kolkata, Sri Lanka beat India in the quarterfinal, and the excessive reaction by crowd there and Indian fans in general was probably provoked by ad campaigns that assumed India would win the World Cup. It was as if the Indian team had veered off script.
A kind photographer lent me a pair of pyjamas after my baggage had been lost on arrival in Lahore for the final. On the day of the match, walking towards the Gaddafi Stadium I spied the artist M.F. Husain and his daughter and caught up with them to say hello. Husain was supporting Sri Lanka too. Aravinda’s century, three wickets and two catches were the highlights.
But this World Cup had been about more than the cricket. Wisden approved of the manner in which it increased the profile of the game but was unimpressed about the focus on commerce. Today, 23 years later, cricket and commerce have been bedmates for so long that we might wonder what the fuss was all about.
