The T20 World Cup win was a phenomenal sporting achievement, but it was much more than that. It was a thunderous vindication of an inclusive, secular India.
There is context and provocation for writing this piece. Even as the country erupted in celebration at the come-from-the-dead triumph of our team in the T 20 World Cup final, our senses were assailed by a monstrous fly in the ointment.
In what has now become a customary and vexatious intervention whenever the country rejoices over a great sporting or other achievement like the Chandrayaan 2 landing, we were subjected to the notorious Godi media’s creepy sycophancy that cut in on the festivities with the ‘breaking’ news of PM Modi conveying his congratulations to the team and speaking personally to Rohit. Virat, Dravid and Jadeja.
What followed was a televised breakfast meeting at his residence in Delhi. It was the tired old script and staged antics playing out again – the real achievers dragooned into sharing the spotlight with the world’s leading attention-seeker and poseur.
It’s galling that this self-absorbed man who has divided his people and taught them to hate is simulating solidarity with champions who have brought the country together with their heroics, sportsmanship and camaraderie. They represent the antithesis of what he stands for. But more on this later.
Amidst the universal excitement, I couldn’t resist sending the following heartfelt WhatsApp message to my friends and other contacts:
“Fantastic! India’s greatest victory ever! At a time when even sport is political, this brave team represents the best of secular, inclusive India. Led from the front by Rohit, the game was won by Virat who had famously said, ‘attacking someone over their religion is the most pathetic thing that a human being can do’; by Jasprit Bumrah, the magnificent Sardar; by Hardik Pandya the neo-Kapil Dev who is married to a Serbian; by Axar who can be recognised by his name; and by the rest of a team that epitomises the best of what we should all aspire to be! Well done guys!”
In no time, the error in my message was pointed out by two Modi bhakts. Accusing me of a minority fixation, one of them affirmed: “Axar is a proud Hindu. His full name is Akshar Rajeshbhai Patel.”
Sorry guys for the mistake but that does not take away from my contention that multicultural solidarity, mutual empathy and a shared humanity, characterise this indomitable team. Also remember, Mohammed Siraj who was instrumental in India winning the Asia Cup last year, is a key member of this champion side.
An accursed blight has struck Indian cricket in the form of Modi and his non-cricketing cabal who have usurped the game for their own dishonourable purposes. That incomparable sportswriter, Sharda Ugra, writing in the Wisden Almanac, has laid bare the sordid shenanigans of a deeply politicised BCCI that is now a vehicle for commerce, for embellishing the Modi cult, and for flaunting and promoting the extreme right-wing creed of Hindu nationalism.
Cricket has been commandeered for the cause and become another instrument to propagate an ugly chauvinism premised on anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiment. Her damning indictment is fleshed out with irresistible specifics.
The regime’s sickening obsession with Pakistan borders on the burlesque. Ugra mentions an incident during the Asia Cup in Kandy last year when the IPL chairman, Arun Dhumal made a friendly overture by crossing into the box of the chair of the Pakistan Cricket Board but within minutes he received frantic summons to return to the BCCI box. He did and in the next frame you saw Dhumal seated next to our desi Bunter, the Indian tricolour streaked across his cheeks as an act of contrition.
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Much more dangerous has been the official encouragement of the lumpen cricket supporters who have been given a free run, jeering and abusing opponents, particularly the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Everywhere boorishness reigned during the World Cup! The coarsest ‘patriotic’ songs suffused with Hindu pride and anti-Muslim bias were belted out at stadiums and ‘Jai Shri Ram’ was the universal war cry. Overseas fans were even roughed up.
Communal bigotry, actively inflamed by Modi and his ilk, has poisoned every nook and corner of our society. Is it any surprise that last month during a local cricket tournament in a village in Gujarat, a pro-Hindutva group, incensed by the outstanding performance of the Muslim participants, lynched a Muslim spectator, allegedly the sixth such lynching in the recent past. To modify what George Orwell said, in Modi’s watch, sport is war plus the shooting!
The capture of the BCCI by Jay Shah was only to be expected, given the fact that it is among the richest sports bodies in the world. Without ado, Ahmedabad has been foisted on the cricket fraternity as the Mecca, or should one say Ayodhya, of Indian cricket.
Against all civilised norms and ethics, the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stadium has been renamed Narendra Modi stadium, the first time ever that a serving PM has commemorated and memorialised his own name. Its newly designed cricket ‘Hall of Fame’ is plastered with pictures of Modi, Amit Shah and Amit’s son, Jay Shah.
Without a hint of squeamishness, key cricketing events such as the 2023 World Cup final, the much sought after India-Pakistan match in the group stage and both semi-finals of this year’s IPL were appropriated by Ahmedabad. Today, Indian cricket is mainly about Gujarat and Gujaratis or so it seems!
The BCCI under the present dispensation is lord and master of the cricketing universe, arrogating the leadership not by playing a constructive role in the administration of cricket but through sheer money power that is regrettably twinned with the ethics of an alley cat.
There are instances galore of the BCCI riding roughshod over the ICC, which include disregarding the ICC-ratified schedule and the last-minute change of pitch in the crucial New Zealand India-semi-final of the 2023 World Cup without seeking the approval of the ICC – a body that, enticed by BCCI’s financial clout, has been has been allowing it to walk all over it.
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The truly great sportsperson does his best to give back to the sport and the community what he has received from them. Michael Holding, the great West Indies fast bowler who was expressively described as ‘whispering death’ for the existential threat that he posed to batsmen, passionately believed that after the ‘fun and games’, what really matters is the sportspersons’ contribution to making the world a better place by mobilising their enormous social power for advancing the cause of social justice.
Barring a few exceptions, our sportspersons have fallen short in this regard. I don’t remember the name of the writer who referred to celebrities as “commercialised zombies” focused on grabbing the moolah and impervious to the life and death problems confronting society, but that description fits our former cricketer celebrities such as Sachin, Gavaskar and Shastri who, in the ten years that our democracy was in dire peril, have been abject toadies to the regime.
Like in his playing days, Sachin continues to bat for himself, exploiting his stardom for hawking merchandise and for less honourable purposes that include wholeheartedly endorsing the regime’s transgressions. One cannot forget his government-tutored response to the tweets of Rihanna and Greta Thunberg in support of our protesting farmers, wherein he urged fellow-Indians “to resist any threat to the nation’s sovereignty by foreign forces.”
Gavaskar and Shastri have been steadfast hatchet men of the BCCI, upbraiding and intimidating foreign commentators and administrators who dare criticise the actions of our Board or our players, whether right or wrong. Respected sports administrators and former players were indecorously called ‘morons’ who should ‘shut up’ by Gavaskar when they raised legitimate objections to the arbitrary switching of the pitch for the New Zealand-India World Cup semi-final.
Neither of them came out in support of their beleaguered fellow commentators – Sanjay Manjrekar and Harsha Bhogle – when they were unfairly dropped from the panel of commentators by the BCCI. At a time when saffronisation with its suggestive Hindu symbolism has become a part of the BCCI toolkit and threatens our fragile social fabric, the push to rename our team “Bharat” with its obvious schismatic connotation, was endorsed by Gavaskar, though he knows better.
The abject capitulation of former players and administrators to the inducements and bullying by ‘Motabhai’ and gang only serves to enhance and emphasise the guts and high-mindedness of our present team of champions.
Virat Kohli’s sterling defence of his teammate, Mohammed Shami, after our T20 World Cup defeat to Pakistan in 2021, is one for the ages. Not only did he lash out at the cowardly Bhakt trolls, but more significantly, he launched a frontal assault on communal bigotry which was nothing short of condemnation of Modi and his iniquitous ways.
Then, the other day, he bearded the fox in his own den. At the breakfast meeting with the PM, Virat used self-criticism to convey to his avid listener that he would also do well to give up his arrogance and become a team man if he wanted to succeed.
Not for nothing is Rohit Sharma worshipped by his teammates and millions of fans. He is fearless and plays with a straight bat on and off the field. During the World Cup last year, when the players were under enormous pressure to parade the regime’s majoritarian ideology in every possible way, Rohit Sharma and his team stamped their foot down when it was suggested that the India team switch from blue to an all-orange outfit. To quote Ugra, these dauntless cricketers chose to say, “Not on our watch, not here, not today.”
That gesture signified infinitely more than the rejection of the colour orange. It was a repudiation of Hindutva and its dangerous ramifications! Bravo, our heroes!
(Mathew John is a former civil servant. The views are personal)
