No other country’s national sport can match Indian cricket’s reach from rich to poor and scrubland to super-stadium
Photographs by Frédéric Noy
Cricket in India manages to be both mass-participation religion and opulent dreamland, set alongside Bollywood. No other country’s national sport can match Indian cricket’s reach from rich to poor, scrubland to super-stadium, amateur anonymity to mind-blowing fame.
India’s political class is fortunate to be able to draw on such a unifying force in a disparate populace of 1.4 billion. And with devotion comes power.
India generates 80% of world cricket’s revenue. The current TV contract for showing the sport in India fetched £2.2bn. English cricket’s income is about a third of the riches raked in by England’s opponents in this summer’s five-Test series.
While that contest rolled on, Indian corporations lined up to buy teams from the Hundred, the limited-over competition for eight city-based women’s and men’s teams set up by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2021. The format will be franchised at some later date.
The world cricket calendar now revolves around the Indian Premier League (IPL), which other countries have scrambled to imitate. Sides from the Hundred bought by Indian investors are likely to be renamed to bring them into line with IPL brands.
In cricket’s shift of power from England and Australia to India, historians may see an example of the colonised becoming the coloniser. India calls the shots now. And if the old world grumbles about its loss of influence, it likes the gold rush.
They may not feel the benefits, but children playing on dusty wastelands in India are the farthest outposts of a global bonanza.
Hit for six on the beach at Juhu, Mumbai. Cricket inspires almost religious fervour in India
Workers in the factory of Sanspareils Greenlands, one of India’s largest cricket equipment manufacturers, fix the brand’s SG stickers to finished bats
Junior players cheer on their team in an inter-schools tournament on the Azad Maiden sports ground in Mumbai
Bowling at the Vasoo Paranjape Cricket Academy in Mumbai
Jammu and Kashmir women’s team visit Mumbai to play Rajasthan
At the Mark Divine workshop in Meerut, balls are dipped in heated wax to protect against water damage
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