DISEQUILIBRIUM: Indians Reinvent Their Love For Cricket Switching Sides From Jingoistic Nationalism To Regional Chauvinism In Keeping With All The IPL Madness
DISEQUILIBRIUM: Indians reinvent their love for cricket, switching sides from jingoistic nationalism to regional chauvinism in keeping with all the IPL madness
By [/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Sandeep+Bamzai Sandeep Bamzai]
Published: 01:01 BST, 21 April 2013 | Updated: 01:01 BST, 21 April 2013
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For aeons, Indian cricketers were a ragtag bobtail outfit who would go through the motions on overseas tours.
It was a given that they would be thrashed mercilessly on away tours and return with hangdog expressions plastered on their faces.
More often than not, cricket savants expected this of their team.
Tiger Pataudi was probably the first Indian captain to instill some sort of confidence into our cricketers.
From confidence comes self-belief and to some degree, arrogance that you are better than the best. All this has to be built on the edifice of performance.
And willy-nilly performance overseas became the benchmark for real success.
It became a litmus test to ascertain the real character of our cricketers.
Tiger led by example and his own bat.
As a cover fieldsman, he was exemplar; as a batter with one eye, he was pretty much invincible when he was in the zone.
The neo Indian cricketer's progression saw yet another inflection point when Saurav Ganguly took over as captain of the Indian cricket team
At Leeds, following on against England in 1967, he waged war against the quicks, scoring 148.
This, after battling single-handedly in the first essay, where he scored 67.
A year later in Oz, he showed his class again by scoring 75 and 85 on one good leg and eye at Melbourne.
Tiger was cerebral having grown up in England and playing for Sussex; he found his metier despite his handicap.
In 1974-75, when India was desperately looking for a captain against the West Indies at home, the onus was on a semi-retired Tiger to pick up the pieces after the distasteful Summer of '42 tour of England, when India was vanquished 3-0 by England.
Tiger told the selectors, "do you want a batsman or captain? If you want the latter I am available." Tiger being Tiger, unleashed his troika of spinners on a hapless young Windies team which was brimming with future stars - Andy Roberts, Viv Richards, http://footballncrickethub.website2.me/blog/yuvraj-singh-performance-in-ranji-trophy Gordon Greenidge et al.
Tiger miraculously levelled the series after being two-love down, but lost the decider in what was then Bombay. India remained a middling and pedestrian travelling side thereafter. Till the next big play that is - the 1983 World Cup win by Kapil's Devils.
Neo-Indian cricketers
Indian crowds would flock to the grounds at home, as did diasporic Indians, but the latter had nothing much to cheer about, given the performance levels.
It was the 1983 World Cup victory in England, which changed the perception about the Indian cricket team. From bad tourists, they had suddenly turned world beaters.
The seeds of this new found self-belief had actually come a few months earlier at an unfamiliar West Indian tour halt called Berbice, where India defeated the mighty Caribbean islanders for the very first time.
Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were at the vanguard of this change.
Kapil Dev winning the 1983 World Cup in England provided a booster shot of self belief in players
After the dismal showing in 1975 and 1979 World Cups, India was a bunch of no-hopers as usual.
Berbice had injected a booster shot into the Indian team, which showed remarkable form to pouch the Cup.
The diaspora loved every moment of it, the Tiranga was suddenly unfurled at different venues and neo-jingoism took root as cricket became a metaphor for nationalism.
An immediate follow up triumph in Australia, importantly again overseas, in the World Championship of Cricket validated the arrival of the Neo Indian cricketer and his travelling support base of fans.
Indian tourists in the Caribbean and other parts had found support earlier too, but with the team not winning, barring say in New Zealand in 1968, England and West Indies in 1971, there was a strange lethargy about making too much of noise at different pit stops around the globe.
They would be objects of derision and jeered rudely when India was sliding, which it invariably always was. All that changed with the 1983 World Cup, and flags and jingoism became commonplace as voluble and vociferous 'Bharat Army' members cheered loudly.
From Australia to England, the winning habit also came along and a convergence of jingoism with a bolder, more aggressive mien displayed by our cricketers, changed the perception rapidly.
The neo Indian cricketer's progression saw yet another inflection point when Saurav Ganguly took over as captain of the Indian cricket team.
The journey found new meaning, India was a different team, its body language was aggressive, its style of play was uplifting and this new underlying credo was reflected around the world, from Ganguly himself taking off his shirt and mouthing expletives on the Lord's balcony to the jelly beans fracas in England, to Monkeygate in Oz, or to Viru the Bomber taking on different bowling attacks, a new age had dawned in Indian cricket.
In fact, Saurav Ganguly's style of captaincy and his iconic Lord's act typified the newly found aggro, a far cry from the old style meek and submissive Indian tourists of the past.
Ganguly was driven and he in turn drove the Indians to new highs; cricketers like Sreesanth thrived in this new dressing room environment.
Though two slightly sober captains followed - Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble - the strong underpinning of the Ganguly era remained.
M S Dhoni brought in an understated style; his boys remained tough and unrelenting in their attitude.
Who can forget Andrew Flintoff riling Yuvraj Singh in a T20 game in South Africa? He got so much under his skin that Yuvraj took his angst out of Stuart Broad hitting him for six sixes in an over.
The IPL rush Tiger Pataudi was probably the first Indian captain to instill some sort of confidence into our cricketers
By now the neophytes had jumped into the bull pit and cricket had become more or less a passion. It is around the same time, just as India's graph was rising in world cricket, that the IPL whirligig came into existence.
The epicentre of cricket commerce, Lalit Modi monetised and sweated every opportunity and asset that he could, to create what has become a mass hysteria providing spectator sport.
From the beginning, I was a naysayer, why should people come to watch a franchise, which is bereft of emotion, blood, sweat and tears.
Indians love cricket to the point of distraction is what I overlooked from this theorem.
Cricket provides a different adrenaline rush, the junkies love their fix, but only when their country is involved.
They wear their patriotism on their sleeve, cricket allows them to enter the theatre of gladiatorial contests. I was wrong; what I overlooked was the phenomenon of sub-tribal loyalties, which comes from supporting a city based franchise.
Something that cuts across all sports in developed western markets.
One had seen this earlier during the heady days of Ranji battles between an all powerful Bombay, which was slowly being challenged by new power centres like Delhi and Karnataka.
But it all died down once the Indian stars stopped playing Ranji Trophy regularly.
New loyalties
Now it is back and how. Otherwise, how does one explain hot weather cricket, a sure shot recipe for quick fix entertainment with hordes trooping into stadia in April and May.
The format is probably the clincher and the quality of cricket, the topping. Look at the ongoing season, the cricket on show has been gripping and often breath-taking.
And then there are the crowds which cannot be ignored, a whole new phalanx of people, happy to spend three and a half hours watching cricket.
Thereby spawning a spanking new culture of franchise loyalty.
We have come a long way from the time Tiger Pataudi gave the game a fillip in the 1960s, instilling pride in one's performance and identity as an Indian.
In this evolutionary process, several people have played a part, none more than Saurav Ganguly and now, Dhoni bringing new diasporic tribes into the fold.
Propagating jingoism, giving Indians in far-off distant lands an identity and voice. All credit to Modi and his brand of city clubs and sub-tribal loyalties. Dang, I love this game.
