The Indian Cricket Fan Faces a Choice

Last week, Indian-owned franchises in the England and Wales Cricket Board-run (ECB-run) league, The Hundred, found themselves caught in an anti-discrimination row after a BBC report suggested that the four Indian-owned franchises would not be considering Pakistani cricketers for their teams. The UK media, with a rare show of unity across the ideological spectrum, condemned any such move as discriminatory, and a “stain on the game”.

While the ECB has for the time being brokered an uneasy compromise, by issuing a general statement where all teams reiterate their commitment to inclusion, the affair, coming on the heels of the ongoing controversy laden International Cricket Council or ICC T-20 World Cup adds fuel to the emerging global opinion that the control India exercises over cricket is damaging to the future of the sport. 

While the cricketing world’s political responses to the dominance of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and Indian capital in general, are interesting to watch, the question for Indian cricket fans today is more fundamental – are we merely passive consumers of an admittedly intoxicating mix of nationalism, capital and entertainment or do we still have a broader and more genuine love for the game? 

Answering this question requires us to understand the interplay between Indian nationalism, capital, and cricket. Specifically, we must understand how this interplay shaped us, the Indian cricket fan, into who we are today. 

Structure of feeling

Welsh sociologist and culture critic Raymond Williams argues that each generation has a unique “structure of feeling”. The structure of feeling is the broader culture of a period. It is a living result of all the elements in a particular society or organisation, and shapes how a particular society views events, at a particular point in time.

While this structure of feeling need not be perceived in the same way by every single person living in a society, its penetration is wide enough to permit communication on its terms. Often the same term can invoke widely different meanings in different generations based on differences in the underlying structure of feeling.

For example, in the 1950s, the word “reform” in India would have immediately been understood as referring to social reform. By the 1970s, “reform” would have conjured visions of nationalisation, and by the 1990s, “reform” was almost universally equated with liberalisation. 

Liberalisation and the reframing of capital

This underlying structure of feeling often shapes how capital is perceived by the population in each generation. Liberalisation in India marked a fundamental cultural shift in this respect. Class conflict, and all its attendant institutions like labour unions, were described as a thing of the unproductive past. In this new era, vastly unequal beneficiaries of growth were encouraged to believe that they were equal participants in an abstract growth story. 

As the highly individualist free market rhetoric of the West was not appealing enough in the Indian cultural context to create this illusion of shared interests, nationalism, and traditional (and often reactionary) family values became the pillars of the new relationship between capital and the population. While films (such as the 1994 hit Hum Apke Hain Kaun) and television (like Ekta Kapoor’s soap empire) became the vehicles of these unifying “family values”, cricket was the chosen vehicle of nationalism. 

The BCCI was something of a pioneer in this model. With the rise of cable television in post liberalisation India, they were among the first to demonstrate how a corporate entity could turn nationalism into revenue, and successfully position this money-making as a service to the nation. Over time, as the link between nationalism and cricket became cemented in the wider public imagination, the role of the sport itself became less central.

The players didn’t have to wear blue to spark feelings of national pride. The formation of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2007 and its status as the wealthiest cricketing league in the world was discourse altering. From cricket being the vehicle of nationalism, capital by itself became a source of nationalist pride. 

This was particularly convenient, as Indian capital in this era began to look outward. To negotiate with the forces of globalisation, while retaining the nationalism that smoothed over class conflict, Indian corporates actively cultivated the idea of likening capital flowing outwards to a form of national conquest.

Overseas acquisitions by Indian companies in this period, like the 2006 acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel, the 2007 acquisition of Corus Group by Tata Steel, and the 2008 acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover by Tata Motors were all celebrated in a manner reminiscent of a major sports victory. While a portion of the Indian urban bourgeoisie who invested in these companies through the stock market certainly benefited from these expansions, for the vast majority of Indians, the only gain from this outflow of capital was an intangible sense of pride. 

Many Indian cricket fans who hold on to a seemingly inexplicable pride in the financial might of the BCCI today, and who are often seen online broadcasting Indian capital’s financial dominance over the sport, are the product of this specific cultural negotiation. 

Hindutva and its changes

The rise of Hindutva was to add to this underlying structure of feeling in two ways. First, it introduced the idea of dominant victimhood. Dominant victimhood, where groups that exercise material dominance paint themselves as victims, is one of the pillars of Hindu majoritarianism.

In this narrative, any bullying from a position of dominance is justified because its painted as necessary for survival, or as a justified retaliation against a wrong, either present or historical. Sustaining this narrative of Hindu victimhood requires a constant manufacturing of Muslim adversaries, which makes any show of magnanimity or generosity in subcontinental geopolitics difficult. 

Today, the proximity of the BCCI to Hindu nationalist politics in India, as well as the broader cultural rejection of any cross-border magnanimity means that, unlike in the 1990s and the early 2000s, the BCCI can no longer position itself as a paternalistic body invested in the growth of cricket in the region. Constant conflicts with other subcontinental cricket boards also means that the BCCI can no longer brand its global dominance as a collective decolonising of the game.

Second, the rise of Hindutva was accompanied by the creation of a particularly aggressive online discourse. In the 1990s and the 2000s, the more toxic outcomes of the mix of cricket, capital, and nationalism, like the tendency of crowds to throw bottles when the game wasn’t going India’s way could be explained away as part of the sub-continent’s unique passion for the game.

With social media, this sanitisation is no longer possible. Each fan is not just a part of a collective in a stadium but an individual with an opinion. When these opinions go viral, they become seen as representative of Indian cricket as a whole. 

2024 and beyond

There is however a sense that the underlying structure of feeling is changing in India. First, Indian capital is increasingly being invested abroad. Between the financial years 2024 and 2025, Indian overseas investment rose from around $25 billion to $41 billion.

For this capital, narratives of nationalism cannot come at the cost of backlash in the countries hosting their investments. The fact that the Indian-owned franchises in The Hundred quietly signed on to the ECB statement confirming their commitment to inclusivity is an indicator of this change. 

Second, historic levels of inequality, and environmental degradation in India are making nationalist narratives of shared interests between the population and capital more difficult to sustain. The recent wave of sympathy for gig worker unions and unions within IT companies in the public discourse, and the conversation around air pollution, exemplify these cracks. 

Finally, the Hindutva idea of the nation, that seeks to brand India’s 200 million strong Muslim population as lesser citizens, is certainly not as universally accepted as earlier ideas of nationalism. As the idea of the nation itself becomes contested, the utility of nationalism as a bridge between capital and the population diminishes.

The impact of some of these factors on cricket has already become visible. While a vocal section of the Indian cricket fanbase remain loyal cheerleaders of the BCCI, there is also a quieter fatigue building – a small section of the fandom that is finding itself alienated from what the sport has come to stand for.

The recent backlash within India against a particularly boorish advertisement of an India-South Africa match is a sign of this growing discomfort. As rising inequality shrinks the Indian consumer base, the value Indian capital gains from being associated with cricket in India is also quietly being reevaluated. The fact that almost every IPL team now also invests in cricket leagues abroad indicates that they are beginning to at least hedge their bets on the geographic future of the sport.

We are often told that the BCCI’s revenue generation makes them indispensable to world cricket, and perhaps this is true. And yet, what the world would miss the most about Indian cricket is not its money, but its fans. The Indian cricket fan is not solely a commercial byproduct of liberalisation.

The Indian cricket fan existed long before the entrance of money into the sport. Their knowledge of the game, and their noisy and argumentative passion for the sport has given cricket its flavour for decades. This passion has not disappeared. The speed with which an impromptu cricket match emerges on a quiet road in the business districts of South Mumbai on a Sunday has nothing to with nationalist assertion or capital and everything to do with this underlying love of the game. 

Indian fans who find themselves uncomfortable with the trajectory of the sport today face a choice. They can choose to continue to consume, take pride in and regurgitate the linkages between cricket, nationalism and capital that have been so profitable for the BCCI, or they can choose to use the opportunity to critically evaluate their relationship with the sport, and perhaps rediscover putting their love for the game first. These choices are not meaningless.

The financial might of the BCCI does not exist in a vacuum. Each such choice by a cricket fan, over time, will build new underlying structures of feeling that will determine the course Indian cricket takes in the coming generations.

Sarayu Pani is a lawyer by training and posts on X @sarayupani.

Missing Link is her column on the social aspects of the events that move India.

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