MORE THAN A GAME: Hyper-nationalism burdens the team

SHOULD the cricket craze in India be compared with the Brazilian love for soccer?

After their victories in the West Indies and England in 1971, a further twelve years were to pass before India won anything of substance on the cricket field. But this was the big prize, the World Cup itself. The tournament was played in England, and the fancied teams included the hosts, Pakistan, and the West Indies. India started at 50 to 1 outsiders, and even the captain, the superb all-round cricketer Kapil Dev, thought only that his men were 'capable of a surprise or two'. But they played above themselves to reach the semi-finals. In this round they beat England. Now they would play the West Indies, who had won the trophy in 1975 and 1979, and were generally regarded as unbeatable in the one-day game.

For the final at Lord's the rival supporters 'had turned the ground into a carnival with the cymbals and bongos of the West Indian supporters in disharmonious rhythm with the dholaks and temple bells of the Indian supporters'. The latter fell silent when Kapil Dev's side were shot out for the low score of 183. But a few West Indian wickets fell early, panic set in the lower-middle order, and finally they fell forty-three runs short.

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As it happened, Indira Gandhi was now prime minister once more. Mrs Gandhi sent an early telegram to the cricketers, which said, inter alia, that 'My slogan is India can do it. Thank you for living up to it'. (This slogan, with the cricketers' photographs, was then displayed on state-owned petrol stations all over India.)

The patriotic spirit had caught the players. When they landed at Bombay airport to a crowd shouting 'Kapil Dev zindabad', the captain immediately corrected them by saying 'Bharat zindabad'. After a reception in Bombay, the players went home for a few days, and reassembled in Delhi to meet the prime minister. For her reception to the players, held on the lawns of Hyderabad House, Mrs Gandhi was dressed in cricket colours: a dotted white sari with a matching white blouse. The Prime Minister spoke to each player, held the Cup herself, posed for photographs and made a short speech where she told the players: 'Shabash, keep the flag flying.' What she said next was more notable: to quote a press report, 'the Prime Minister however expressed surprise that the English press was underplaying the achievement of the Indian team. She said the entire nation had been thrilled at the victory.'

The Indian cricket victories of 1971 had taken place in between two personal political victories for Mrs Gandhi; in the elections of January, and on the battlefield in December. Indeed, after that winter's war against Pakistan-which India won, comprehensively-the cricketers were commandeered for national service. They were asked to play a round of matches to raise money for the Bangladesh Fund. At these games, played all over India, lesser politicians sought also to reflect some of the glory onto themselves. The cricketers, wrote one critic in disgust, 'became part of a multipurpose circus that went round and round the country-a bandwagon to climb for leaders from all shades of public life'.

The nationalism of Mrs Gandhi was a curious mixture of paranoia and triumphalism. Even at the time of her greatest victories she spoke darkly of the 'enemies of the nation'. In 1971 these were the princes, the capitalists, and the western world. The United States had openly supported Pakistan, and even sent the Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean. In this context cricket and cricketers would be used to help Indira, and India, keep those ever-threatening forces at bay.

When the Indian team won the World Cup in 1983 Mrs Gandhi was not as firmly in control as in 1971. Her party was riven by inner tensions, her nation riven by regional loyalties-or disloyalties-in particular the rebellions then active in Assam and the Punjab. And the external enemies were also present: note the brooding reference in her speech to the apparent hostility to Indian cricketers of the British press. To suggest that Indira Gandhi saw herself as the Kapil Dev of politics may not be entirely far-fetched.

Should the cricket craze in India be compared with the Brazilian love for soccer, then? In that country soccer has become the vehicle for the unfulfilled aspirations of everyday life. The game of football provides a 'breathing space between a horrific immediate past and an anxiously uncertain future'. Brazil still grapples with an unequal society and an imperfect democracy, but at least they win the World Cup, world sport's greatest prize, once in every two or three attempts. In India, however, the expression of sporting nationalism is accentuated both by the continuing poverty of its peoples and the very widely dispersed nature of its on-field triumphs. Between 1986 and 1999 India did not lose a single Test series at home, playing in a climate and general environment suitable to its players and on pitches doctored for its spin bowlers. In that same period it only won one Test match overseas, in Sri Lanka. It has won one World Cup out of seven played thus far. It is thirty years since it won a Test series in West Indies, and it has still never won one in Australia. But hope lingers, kept alive by memories of other victories: in West Indies and England in 1971, the World Cup in 1983, the World Championship of Cricket in 1985.

Meanwhile, the integration of the world through television and the liberalisation of India's own economy have made comparisons with other countries more obvious and less palatable. India will never be a Tiger to match the other Asian Tigers. India ranks at about 150 in the World Development Report, just below Namibia and just above Haiti. It is the cricketers, and they alone, who are asked to redeem these failures.

Especially in the last decade, cricket nationalism has become more intense and ferocious. One sign is the increasing hostility to cricketers from other countries. In the past, the Indian cricket fan was inclusive in his sympathies; he would worship the West Indian Frankie Worrell and the Englishman Tony Greig alongside Vinoo Mankad and Gundappa Viswanath. This characteristic seemed to confirm the remark of the anthropologist Verrier Elwin that where Christians believe more in God, Hindus believe in more Gods. But it appears that Hinduism has become semiticised. Chauvinism has triumphed over generosity. Our side must win, at any cost. Stone throwing, arson and other acts of vandalism have become increasingly common, especially when India is on the verge of defeat.

Such hyper-nationalism places a massive burden on our cricketers. When they lose, the response tends to the vicious. Newspapers call into question the fitness, probity and patriotism of the defeated cricketers. Fans burn their effigies on the streets, and sometimes throw stones at their homes. Win or lose, it is hard work playing cricket for India nowadays. I suppose the ever-increasing pay packet compensates.

Edited excerpts from A Corner of a Foreign Field. (c) Ramachandra Guha 2002