The future of the cricket crowd

Sportstar (India), 26 March

A cricket crowd is a complex organism, a throbbing mass with a life of its
own. It’s rarely static. In the course of a day’s play it undergoes
paroxysms of joy and despair, intervals of humour, bouts of nastiness and
periods of boredom. Sometimes it’s fractious, bickering with itself.
Sometimes it’s unanimous – astonishingly, if briefly, it really does seem
to feel like ‘one soul’, filled with a single emotion.

Spending a couple of days among the spectators at Mohali was a treat. In
England, banners, flags, placards, drums, whistles and klaxons are all
banned from Test grounds. Here in India, they’ re essential
cricket-watching accoutrements, and they help endow a day at the Test with
a wonderfully festive vibrancy. The din is incessant, and prolonged and
repeated exposure to an Indian cricket crowd could result in a severe case
of tintinitis (the vibrating eardrum syndrome suffered by veteran rock
musicians). But without the din, the world of cricket would be
incalculably poorer, as every visiting cricket side knows.

What made the first Test a special occasion were the visual and vocal
expressions of India-Pakistan amity. Not so long ago, the ugly chants of
“Pakistan – Hai! Hai!” filled Indian cricket grounds even when the
Pakistanis were not the opponents of the day. At Mohali, fans scampered
across the terraces with the flags of the two countries stitched together.
Many had one cheek daubed with the tricolour and one with the star and
crescent. Next to me, a quiet young man earnestly lettered his sign: “Bat
and ball is a lot better than assault rifle and grenade”. A group arrived
with tee-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: “Indo-Pak Friendship Forever”.
“Dil dil Pakistan, jaan jaan Hindustan,” they chanted, and anyone familiar
with the history of the sub-continent had to be moved.

None of which inhibited the Indian fans from offering their own team
full-throated, indeed lung-bursting support. Many couldn’t resist taunting
Inzamam: “Alu! Alu!” Gradually, as cricket relations between the south
Asian neighbours become routine (one hopes), opposing sets of fans will
settle into a ritual of friendly banter. The nationalist and communal
connotations that have been superimposed on the cricket will fade,
replaced by a spirit of relaxed sporting contestation. (Though it’s
important to remember that this prospect is a hope, not a certainty; in
the absence of concrete progress towards a stable Indo-Pak peace, the
cricket will remain vulnerable.)

Mohali is India’s most attractive and best appointed Test ground, with
fine views from every seat. The ground staff performed miracles to get
play restarted promptly after the heavy downpour. But even here, the
inconveniences suffered by Indian cricket fans remain an index of their
commitment to the game. For the majority of fans in the cheaper seats (and
it’s in the cheaper sets that the real cricket lovers congregate), the
absence of shade, the hard benches, the shortage of drinking water, the
conditions of the toilets make the long day out something of an endurance
test.

However, the real bane of Indian cricket grounds is the police. “Dressed
in a little brief authority,” they bully, shove, obstruct and harass.
Their supernumerary presence adds nothing to anyone’s security, but does
succeed in needlessly prolonging the queues for entry to the ground. On
the tickets at Mohali it was clearly printed that mobile phones were not
permitted but plastic water bottles were. The police decided to invert the
prohibition, aggressively confiscating water bottles but completely
indifferent to the innumerable mobiles.

It’s also true that cricket crowds in India have changed. While many still
know and love the intricacies of the game, increasing numbers come not to
see but to be seen. In their determination to get their faces on
television, spectators will go to extraordinary lengths. I watched an
eager mother insistently push her four month old baby, bedecked in Indian
colours, at the cameras – completely indifferent to the infant’s terrified
howls.

Increasingly, India’s bottom-up cricket culture is being absorbed by the
top-down celebrity culture. With the proliferation of television sets and
television channels, what seems to count more and more is the fame of the
face, not what the face is famous for. In this, of course, Indian cricket
merely reflects global trends. Everywhere, societies are increasingly
dominated by the ephemera of the media. Everywhere, frantic exhibitionism
and voyeurism replace relaxed and intelligent interaction. Because cricket
is never divorced from broader social forces, inevitably the game is
sucked into this vortex.

Nonetheless, I’d rather watch cricket in south Asia than anywhere else.
And I know that when I return to Lord’s for the Ashes series this summer,
the demur silence will seem eerily unnatural, and I’ll hunger for the
unrestrained passion of a subcontinental crowd.