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    Cricket’s status and popularity in India

    By Will 2 years ago, at the start of March Leave a comment on this post

    After the Ashes, cricket’s stock rose significantly in England. But even in September 2005, with most of the country drunk on Ashes fever - literally, in some cases - it probably only matched India’s insatiable appetite for the game.

    This remarkable fact has been highlighted by Paul Coupar, who’s out there for The Wisden Cricketer and is kindly blogging for Cricinfo too. It makes quite startling reading:

    And that appetite for cricket has not changed if Nagpur’s local Sunday paper, The Hitavada, is anything to go by. In a 16-page paper, there are 15 cricket pieces. Remarkably, one of them is headlined ‘Chappell has acknowledged receipt of email’. Over on the front page, the three lead stories are: ‘England Cook up a defiant story’, ‘Keep restraint, Pawar tells Chappell in surprise meet’ and, finally, the tiddling matter of President Bush snubbing a proposed nuclear deal with Pakistan.

    I agree with Paul that the appetite for cricket has, in recent times, been somewhat gluttonous; Chappell-Ganguly-gate was unnecessarily long-winded, but it nevertheless demonstrates the unparalleled lust for cricket. Is there any other sport which binds a country’s people together as much as cricket does for India?

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    7 Responses to “Cricket’s status and popularity in India”

  • worma wrote:
    March 6th, 2006 at 9.39 pm

    The downside, as mentioned by Paul, has never appeared so immensely ugly..until this Chappell-Ganguly episode.

    Not even in the dark hours of match-fixing. Because atleast that didn’t divide the population, as this one does. But Indians are a resolute bunch…we’ll get over it. As soon as the prime actors in the drama let go of the thread.

    But still, its a nice situation to be in, this whole cricket mania here. Since I like cricket, and India is crazy about it, so we get a lot of what I like :-)

  • shakester [akr] wrote:
    March 7th, 2006 at 5.34 am

    thats a good question, if any other nation is so caught up with a single sport as a nation. I can’t think of any, purely because football (which surely has the same amount of passion in, say, a Brazil) is more a club game that divides a nation (so to speak), not a game predominantly between countries.
    So yeah- is there any other sport and country…this crazy?

  • Scott wrote:
    March 8th, 2006 at 12.00 am

    New Zealand’s rugby union obsession would have to come close.

  • Christopher wrote:
    March 8th, 2006 at 11.49 am

    Chinese - table tennis?
    Finns - Ski Jumping?
    USA - Ten-Pin Bowling…………

  • Saurabh Wahi wrote:
    March 9th, 2006 at 5.32 pm

    In terms of sheer ability to bring a billion together for a single ’cause’, India cricket is unmatched…

  • sandeep wrote:
    April 12th, 2006 at 2.46 pm

    hello
    I m Sandeep Dwivedi and i thing sehwag will droped on 7th ODI.

  • Sajan wrote:
    March 24th, 2007 at 8.13 pm

    I saw this Picture of the Indian Team after their 2007 world cup debacle! It really speaks for itself!!!

    http://www.nowpublic.com/world_cup_cricket_lets_hope_the_indian_team_members_would_get_work_selling_coke_biscuits_and_underwear

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