From The Latest Issue: How Cricket Shapes Indian Identity And Inspires Travel Worldwide

At the end of Day 3, an Indian defeat at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata seemed imminent. Having scored 445 in the first innings, Australia had dismissed the home team for 171, forcing them to follow on. Though India’s second innings began on a more optimistic note, with openers S.S. Das and S. Ramesh putting on a 50-run partnership, the team were soon in trouble: Sachin Tendulkar was dismissed for 10, and captain Sourav Ganguly missed out on a well-deserved half-century. The home team ended the day at 252 for four, trailing the Australian total by 20.

Led by Steve Waugh, the visitors seemed set on notching up their 17th consecutive Test match victory. But VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid had other ideas. Batting at 109 overnight, Laxman remained unbeaten through Day 4, scoring a record-breaking double century. Dravid also remained at the crease all day, scoring a century. By the time India declared on the morning of Day 5, they had set Australia a target of 384 runs.

A dramatic collapse of Australia’s batting line-up, engineered by Harbajan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar, left the visitors stranded 171 runs short of the target. This was only the third—and till now, final—time that a team had won a Test match after being asked to follow on. For 15-year-old me, who had played truant at school to watch the match every day, it earned a lifetime of bragging rights for witnessing one of the greatest Test matches of the 21st century. Like me, every cricket fan in the world can recall a match that made them a lover of the game, bunk classes and work, and even travel to distant shores to experience its mystique.

Historian Ram Guha, in his book, "A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport (2003)," writes that though the modern form of the game, its rules and rituals, came into its own in Victorian England, it is in India that cricket gained its contemporary vitality. The first cricket matches in India were played by officials of the East India Company in the late 18th century. In the colonial era, cricket was used to represent imperial power.

Since then, however, cricket has become an arena for post-colonial resurgence. As scholars Nalin Mehta, Jon Gemmell and Dominic Malcolm point out in a 2010 article, “cricket has morphed from its state as the ultimate expression of Englishness and, by extension, a representation of imperial power and greatness, into a metaphor for the forces of globalisation and a vehicle for asserting new post-colonial identities.”

Guha, who also served on the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators for the Board of Control for Cricket in India for five months in 2017, writes: “(A) case can be made that as a national sport Indian cricket has no parallel.”

In the two decades since Guha published his book, the cricket market—comprising ticket sales and media—has grown significantly. According to a recent study by the data website Statista, the sport's total revenue is about $1.24 billion per annum. Ticket sales till September 2025 were $132.8 million, and cricket media earned about $1,084 million. This year, ticket sales are expected to reach $136.3 million, and cricket media earnings are expected to reach $1,103.9 million. More Indians are planning their travel—both domestic and international—around cricket matches. According to a Skyscanner report, about 47 per cent of Indian travellers in 2024 planned their trips to attend a cricket match. While some travelled to different cities to catch Indian Premier League matches, others even travelled abroad to watch cricket. For instance, in July last year, as India played England at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham, the city where I now live, the stands were filled with Indians, many of whom had travelled from across the UK and abroad. With Shubman Gill scoring 269 and 161, India cruised to a 336-run victory.

In fact, a case can be made that Indian identity—both at home and in the diaspora—is sustained by the community’s engagement with cricket. The trajectory of cricket in India, as a sport played by millions and consumed by even more, traces a wider historical transformation, from colonial performance to post-colonial reinvention. It has long ceased to be an elite leisure activity and has emerged as a mass cultural infrastructure.

Uttaran Das Gupta is an independent writer and journalist.

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