How cricket bats for democracy in India
Levelling the playing field like little else, the ‘Indian game accidentally discovered by the British’ has become a metaphor for equality and hope
In India, a politician’s son or daughter has a fair chance of getting elected, a business house may actively promote hereditary succession and even the children of film stars can aspire and succeed on joining their parents’ profession, but a Test cricketer’s son cannot wear the India cap without being one of the 11 most talented players in the country. I am a living example of this. Famous surnames don’t work in cricket, that’s why there are no cricketing dynasties in India.
Seventy years after Indian independence, we could argue that cricket is one of the few largely meritocratic activities in the country, mirroring the idealism of our founding fathers and the spirit of our republican Constitution that sought equal opportunity for all. The cosy family networks, the privileges of the elite, the patron-client relations have been thwarted at the gates of a cricket ground: there is a democratic fervour that makes cricket the ultimate authentic Indian dream.
But it wasn’t always like this. Cricket in pre-Independence India started off as a colonial leisure sport to be played in the elite clubs of the presidency towns of British India. It was patronised by the princes and Parsee business elites who saw cricket as a passport to social mobility and a chance to earn the goodwill of the ruling aristocracy. The merchants and maharajas who were the early patrons played and supported the sport as part of their loyalty to the Empire and to signal their own superior social status – is it any surprise that the early royals who played cricket were all batsmen, with bowling and fielding looked at as menial tasks? Is it also any surprise that the first Indian team chosen to play England in 1932 had the Maharaja of Patiala as the captain and the Prince of Limbdi as his deputy?
It is purely fortuitous that the man who eventually led the Indian team for its first Test at Lord’s was not a royal but the greatest Indian cricketer of his generation: C.K. Nayudu, a “commoner”, became captain only because the Patiala ruler dropped out before the tour and the Prince of Limbdi was injured on the eve of the Test.
