CCricket in India was once considered the game of British gentlemen, kings, nawabs and the affluent. After independence, the idea of royalty ended and with it their presence in the national team. The first change in team selection occurred when other powerful elites entered the field and displaced royalty. This new breed was coming mostly from big cities, from affluent upper caste families and last but not least, from the class that had access to gymkhanas and other clubs – places where their abilities could be noticed.
I propose that Indian cricket is going through another major transformation, especially in the era of IPL and club cricket.
IPL has given birth to a huge mass of sports. During last year’s season, the Mumbai Indians vs Chennai Super Kings match had a viewership of 8.3 million on the OTT platform. TV viewership Sometimes it reaches 200 million for IPL fixtures. All this has changed the game. The subalternation of cricket is one of the most important byproducts of the IPL.
India has played the last T20 match against Sri Lanka this season players Like Yadav, Patel, Gill, Hooda, Mavi, Chahal, Malik – all come from non-descript families and lack any so-called blue blood. Even their leader Pandya comes from a humble background.
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historical work
It is indeed a welcome change which is making the game popular and prosperous. Earlier, we had a long list of cricketers of royal lineage – Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, KS Ranjitsinhji, Duleepsinhji, Maharaja “Vizzy” of Vizianagaram, Maharaja Natwarsinhji of Porbandar, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, Hanumant Singh of Banswara State, Yajurvinder Singh among others. The Maharaja of Porbandar was made captain of the Indian team during the first tour of England in 1932 as “protocol demanded a royal-led team”. ,1, 2, In those days, the selectors had limited scope in the selection process and the competition was not that intense. The game was leisurely, with Tests being the main format.
After independence, the supremacy of the kings and emperors decreased. It is not easy to explain how the urban elite, especially the Brahmins, came to dominate the sport during that transition. Writer S. Anand has compiled the statistics of the Indian Test team in his article and has come to conclusion that “from the 1960s to the 1990s, Test-playing Indian teams had an average of at least six Brahmins, sometimes as many as nine.” In his book, Ramachandra Guha argues that “from the 1950s to the 1980s, South Indian and Bombay Brahmins dominated. Besides this, the Brahmins were also powerful in the administration of sports.
Another interesting data set has been provided by Shubham Jain and Gaurav Bhavnani, graduates of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. for their 2018 Research Paper, he extracted data from the archives to demonstrate that “in India’s 85-year-long Test history, only four of the 289 male Test cricketers have reportedly been Dalits.” The paper also listed big city dominance: “In the 1970s–80s, almost half of the Indian Test cricket team was from only six cities: Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata.” The authors refer to a similar phenomenon in South African cricket of that era and the Diversity Project there. (You can read the shorter version of the paper Here,
The low representation of players of lower and middle caste origins in the Indian cricket team prior to the 1990s is a fact that has been empirically proven and documented by several authors. Richard Cashman, Ashish Nandy, Andrew Stevenson, keiran lobo, Ramachandra Guha, Suresh Menon, Amrit Dhillon, Arvind Swaminathan among others.
There is plenty of scholarly work available on the lack of diversity in Indian cricket, so I won’t venture into that area. Rather, I would argue that the landscape is changing and earlier papers and articles are now of more archival value.
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a new shift
Now we see more and more cricketers from farming and herding communities like Jats, Patidars, Ahirs, Gujjars and other OBC communities. journalist Sagar Chowdhary In Indian cricket, this event is seen as a “silent revolution of the lower castes”. Interestingly, this phenomenon of diversity and democratization of Indian cricket has not yet reached the lowest rungs of the caste hierarchy and social order, the SCs and STs. Despite the paucity of SC and ST players in the national team, change is visible. The clout of Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi is also waning. More and more players are coming from small towns.
There are three possible causes of this infection:
- Format Change:Test cricket was once the most popular and only international format of the game. As it is largely a leisure sport, cricketers are not required to be very athletic and strong, especially batsmen who can make high scores relying on their technique and following personal records. The one-day format changed the rules and physical fitness and agility became important factors in team selection. This was further enhanced by the T20 format. Since saving runs has become very important, good fielders with physical fitness have a better chance of getting selected. Cricket has become more competitive and result oriented. This has reduced the discretion of the selection committee. Now it is not easy to remain a non-performer for a long time. Even the most celebrated player, irrespective of reputation, will be dropped if he fails to perform consistently in half a dozen matches. It has opened opportunities for other players.
- Mass of game: Cricket is no longer a game of the elite. Test cricket has made way for ODIs and T20Is, involving immense excitement and drama. This has made the game widely popular among the general public. Crores of people watch cricket and when they see that a player is not performing, they take out their anger on social media. If he sees that a player is not getting a place in the national team despite doing well in the IPL, he makes sure that the BCCI gets to know about it. Recently, we’ve seen an outcry in support Sanju Samson.
- regional the reach,The IPL has increased competitiveness and as the league has taken the game to smaller towns, franchises whose teams are in such pockets look for top-performing players from all parts of the country. Due to this the catchment area of game has increased. More and more players in the national team are coming from regions that were not represented until now.
Dilip Mandal is the former managing editor of India Today Hindi magazine, and has written books on media and sociology. Thoughts are personal.
(Editing by Anurag Choubey)