Jingoism through cricket

It starts off pretty innocuously and happens most often during cricket tournaments. Certain citizens of the Indian Union start talking about the possibility of ‘what if’. What if the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) team and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) team formed one great happy team? How ‘we’ would be an unimaginably formidable side, how ‘we’ would take on anyone. It is interesting to note that few really talk of a ‘united’ South Asian love-in team that includes the team from Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) or the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). What one wants to include and what one doesn’t really care for, thus points to impulses other than cricket, behind such ‘dream-team’ calls. And those are impulses fired by dreams other than cricket, since the BCB of late, and, SLC for quite some time, have been strong cricket powers. There is more than pan-South-Asianist fantasy love going on under such ‘unity’ calls. I have a nagging suspicion that this is Akhand Bharat with a velvet glove. Thankfully, the real world doesn’t start or end with cricket. But it’s a major pastime and serious passion for millions in the subcontinent.

Popular cricket is a deeply exclusionary game — it is the sighted male version of the game. Blind cricket and women’s cricket are feel-good versions for those who cheer ‘their’ men in whatever colour. But even within the sighted male version, a lot of talent is excluded — not for the sake of the game, but to pay homage to entities called nation states. This is because ICC member entities like the BCCI, the PCB, the BCB, SLC and others are often mistaken as ‘national’ associations representing nation states. Well, they aren’t.

The BCCI is not a government body, but a consortium of private clubs and legally functions as a society registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. It was founded in 1928. Some of the BCCI members were formed much before the BCCI. For example, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) was formed in 1908. Even in its constituent structure, the BCCI’s affiliates don’t correspond to the states of the Indian Union. For example, some constituents are not states but entities like the Railway Sports Promotion Board. Additionally, cricket associations from some states of the Indian Union, like Mizoram, aren’t members. Furthermore, some states of the Indian Union have multiple members like Mumbai and Maharashtra (both cricket associations from Maharashtra), Baroda and Gujarat (both cricket associations from Gujarat). In short, there is nothing ‘national’ about the BCCI team’s make-up. That the cricket associations of the Indian Union have largely been captured by politicians and their lackeys make them stink in other ways, but that doesn’t make them public or democratic entities — a key precondition for anything claiming to represent a constitutionally democratic nation state. The PCB is similarly a non-sarkari entity. So are the BCB and SLC. There is nothing officially ‘India’, ‘Pakistan’ or ‘Bangladesh’ about these bodies, just like there was nothing very ‘world’-like about the World Wrestling Federation. These are be-sarkari bodies with a lot of money and a mission.

Now, that we know World Cup-playing teams drawing their players exclusively from the confines of a nation state does not make them ‘national’, we can look for examples which complicate matters more. Take the example of Wales and Scotland. They are not independent nations, but parts of the United Kingdom. The prime example of this category is England. However, they have all played in the World Cup as separate entities. Hong Kong, a territory of China, played in the 2014 World Cup qualifiers. The West Indies team is another kind of formation whose 15 cricket associations represent sovereign nation states as well as British, Dutch and US dependencies, putting flag-waving or TV-smashing tri-colour or green nationalisms to shame.

When cricket becomes a proxy for nationalism, it also comes with the hegemonic assumptions of a nation state. For example, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the captain of the BCCI’s One-Day International team says, “What I can read from behind the stumps, I tell them in Hindi. It's the best language to communicate.” While it may be the best language to communicate for Dhoni whose mother tongue is Hindi, he has not been entrusted by the BCCI or by anyone to carry forward the mission of the Hindi Prachar Sabha to the field. If anything, such things only show to some players that to fit into the supposed ‘national’ team, the captain insists on his own mother tongue. There are many examples to show that many talented players of the BCCI team don’t consider Hindi to be the ‘best language to communicate’. One remembers the 1996 Titan Cup match in Bengaluru, when the BCCI team’s fortunes were lifted by an unexpected batting partnership between Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble. The stump microphones picked up snippets of their conversation and it was in Kannada and not in Hindi. Everyone breathed easier in their own language, irrespective of pompous claims about a ‘best language’. That day, Kannada — a bond deeper than the imposed dominance of Hindi — bound Srinath and Kumble. Not all bonds are based on the dominance — subjugation — marginalisation model. In the Kannada to Hindi journey, cricket loses its diverse flavour. It misses things that Karnataka players say to each other all the time, like, ‘Baratte, baratte’ (It will come, It will come — generally used like run baratte or wicket baratte), ‘Namde cup’ (Cup is ours), ‘Ba Ba’ (come come or while running between the wickets ‘yes, yes’).

As many events have disturbingly shown, cricket in its ‘national’ avatar has become an avenue for war by other means — an opportunity to display jingoism, sexual objectification of women, of doing ‘lena’ and ‘dena’ between nation states (each one imagining oneself to be male and the other to be female and rape imageries to top off the ‘conquest’). Media is a conscious partner in this sordid project. If cricket fans love the game more than the flags they wave during games, they shouldn’t be opposed to bringing out the diversity of the cricketing world in full force. This can take several forms including certain BCCI or PCB constituents like Karnataka or Sindh playing their own teams in the World Cup, just like Scotland or Wales. This will result in more display of talent at the highest level. Cricket will be a richer sport if more players from the nearly 1.4 billion people from Pakistan and the Indian Union get to play the World Cup and not just 22. Others can take their flag and politics elsewhere.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st,  2015.

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