There is a tradition in American baseball where on the opening day of their modestly-named domestic tournament, the World Series, the U.S. President throws the ceremonial first pitch. Not all of them have been from the ground, and not all Presidents have done this, but the cricket World Cup in India could borrow from that tradition.
What could be more exciting than watching Prime Minister Narendra Modi bowl the first ball of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium, surrounded by Narendra Modi fans and watched by millions of Narendra Modi supporters on television? It will be like riding a chariot around the country, and not just around a cricket stadium while sharing the limelight with another head of state.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (on chariot, right) with Australian PM Anthony Albanese on the last day of the India-Australia series, at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad this March. | Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji
It would also be the acknowledgement of reverse colonialism, where a country takes a sport from a conqueror and turns it around as a weapon of power and nose-thumbing. Further proof that cricket is indeed an Indian game accidentally invented by the English, as the sociologist Ashish Nandy once memorably said. The first recorded cricket match in India was played in the 18th century. The colonials soon saw cricket as a way of distracting the natives from the real issues. Three hundred years later, cricket continues to serve that purpose in India.
Adolf Hitler surrounded by athletes at the Berlin Olympics, 1936. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
World leaders have used sport as a means of asserting power (Hitler and the Berlin Olympics, 1936), legitimising dictatorship and suspension of civil rights (Argentina’s military junta and the football World Cup, 1978), or as a means of displaying financial might (Saudi Arabia and its ‘sportswashing’ in recent years with football, golf, and indeed, cricket).
Fanning political fervour
Strictly speaking, the cricket World Cup does not fall into any of these categories. It belongs to a fourth — implied in the others, but transparent here. It works as an extended election campaign.
General elections in India are likely to be held some five months after the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad where it all begins and ends. This would be the greatest interactive election campaign in the world, with every cricket fan involved.
Years from now, it is likely to be remembered not as Kohli’s or Stokes’ or Bumrah’s World Cup so much as the BJP’s World Cup, placing it among examples of the symbiotic relationship between sports and politics. In India, at least.
The equation in world cricket is simple. The International Cricket Council is ruled by the Board of Control for Cricket in Bharat, which is controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, with the Home Minister’s son serving as the Board’s secretary. If diplomacy is war by other means, as Prussian military general Carl von Clausewitz said, then sport is election campaign by other means. By appropriating sport, political parties around the world have, over the years, given breath to the notion that associating with the good and desirable has a rub-off effect on them. It is like taking a selfie with international sport to show how important (and necessary) you are.
India men’s captain Rohit Sharma (left) receives the Asia Cup 2023 Trophy from BCCI Secretary Jay Shah in Colombo, September 2023. | Photo Credit: ANI
In a cricket-mad country, it doesn’t take great effort by politicians to earn the gratitude of fans. In 1981-82, when the England tour of India was in jeopardy after Geoff Boycott and Geoff Cook had played in then-apartheid South Africa, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi earned the thanks of a nation by allowing the tour to go ahead after a convenient (and quite meaningless) apology from the players.
If India win the World Cup — and they have the best team in the world, so why shouldn’t they? — it will be seen as a win for every Indian, but especially for the ruling party. What happens if India don’t win? Nothing.
And that’s the beauty of politicians aligning themselves with a national obsession like cricket. The party will not lose, although depending on the circumstances, the coach and some of the players might find themselves surplus to requirement.
And, if India don’t win, it won’t take long for the PR machinery to decide that cricket is the winner. Or that it’s only a sport after all, and there’s bound to be winners and losers. When rhetoric fails, you can always rely on cliché.
Rain is unlikely to play a significant role in the tournament, but that is to ignore the topsy-turvy nature of the climate crisis.
At the recent Asia Cup, India (who not only have the clout but want to constantly remind other teams of this) changed the rule in the middle of the tournament, adding an extra day for their match against Pakistan. Perhaps during the World Cup, we will see the cricket board honcho commanding the rain to stop. And discovering, like King Canute who ordered the tide to halt, that it would carry on regardless.
India’s Virat Kohli during the Asia Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan in Colombo, September 11, 2023. | Photo Credit: AP
The 50-over World Cup might be on its last legs, overtaken by franchise cricket around the world, caught between the seriousness of Test cricket and the frivolity of the T20. It has been hanging by a thread and is given fresh breath every four years at the World Cup. Yet, if India wins, it could see an extension of its life. A World Cup win will keep the one-day game alive in India, and by extension, the world.
All this might sound excessively cynical. Especially since, if past experience is anything to go by, India will do a fabulous job of it. The cricket itself is likely to be memorable with at least three teams, besides India, capable of winning the title. These include Australia, Pakistan and defending champions England.
Yet, the overarching political atmosphere in which the tournament will be played, and the pressure on the Indian team to perform, so folks who have nothing to do with the game can take the credit, cannot be ignored. India won in 2011 when playing at home, but players have often spoken about the pressures of being hosts. The advantages of knowing the conditions well are sometimes nullified by the stress of expectations.
A team at their peak
India go into the tournament well-prepared, their thundering wins at the Asia Cup and in the series against Australia reminders of what they are capable of. The only worry is if they might have peaked too early. Sometimes it is better to build up slowly to peak performance by the knockout stages of a long tournament. Pakistan and Sri Lanka who lost to India at the Asia Cup are both grateful for the early shock to their system and see a chance to be better-prepared.
India’s recently-injured players such as K.L. Rahul and Jasprit Bumrah, both of whom might have key roles to play, are back in the team and performing at their best. So too is Shreyas Iyer who made a century against Australia. Virat Kohli, who alone has played a World Cup final before, is striking well. The top five — Rohit Sharma, Shubhman Gill, Kohli, Rahul and Ishan Kishan (or Iyer) — make for a fearsome line-up with just one weakness. Not one of them can be relied on for a few overs.
The India team during the Asia Cup 2023 final at R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. | Photo Credit: ANI
The two all-rounders Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja give the team the luxury of choosing between spin and pace among the bowlers to follow. Ravichandran Ashwin could play either as the third all-rounder or the second spinner without altering the balance. Skipper Sharma has an injury-free, in-form set of players to choose from, the worry being whom to leave out.
India’s biggest challenge then, in order to come through a six-week tournament, will be to have their batsmen succeed in every match. It is this matter of balance that will occupy the minds of coach Rahul Dravid and the other support staff.
Every World Cup has its outsider-most-likely-to-win team, and this time, as so many times before, it is New Zealand. England beat them 3-1 in the recent series, but New Zealand have always had an organised one-day team fully capable of winning the title but have somehow fallen short. They came close at the last edition, and only a faulty interpretation of the laws kept them from overtaking England in an exciting final.
Three of India’s team, Pandya, Jadeja and Bumrah, were born in Gujarat where the world’s largest cricket stadium awaits the action. But it is a fourth man born in the State who is confident of winning at the World Cup — and not in a narrow cricketing sense.
The writer’s latest book is ‘Why Don’t You Write Something I Might Read?’.
