In India, cricket is much more than a sport. It is also a political tool, a lucrative industry, a source of prestige and one of India’s most powerful levers for exerting global influence. None of this is lost on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he prepares to seek re-election next year.
NEW DELHI – Tell anyone outside the British Commonwealth that a couple of billion people are currently suffering from World Cup fever and you’re likely to be met with a puzzled look. For most of the world, the World Cup is a football (soccer) tournament that took place in Qatar last year and won’t be played again until 2026 in North America. But for the rest of us – primarily, the nearly two billion people of the Indian subcontinent – the men’s cricket World Cup currently underway in India is what really matters.
The tournament began on October 5, with a match involving the two finalists from the 2019 World Cup in England. Losers at the time, New Zealand, got their revenge by rolling England at the cavernous Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, which – thanks to the dominance of the stadium’s namesake and Indian prime minister – is widely regarded as India’s new cricket capital. Modi himself is expected to attend the finale there on November 19.
As Modi prepares to seek a third term in next year’s general election, his plan to put himself and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) center stage in the finale of India’s most popular event is a calculated political move. An Indian victory in the World Cup final would cap a string of recent international successes – including August’s landing of a lunar rover on the moon’s south pole and the G20 summit in September – thus bolstering Modi’s narrative of national revival. (India are favorites to win, but competition in this marquee is always fierce.)
For decades, Indian politicians have recognized that an association with cricket wins votes. As a result, there are close ties between Indian politics and the cricket bureaucracy. Jay Shah – the all-powerful secretary of the sport’s governing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) – is the son of the country’s second most powerful politician, Modi’s home minister’s strongman Amit Shah. Modi’s late finance minister Arun Jaitley was Delhi’s top cricket administrator. After Jaitley’s death, the national capital’s main cricket stadium was renamed after him. Modi himself headed the Gujarat state cricket association.
Votes aside, there is a lot of money – and therefore global influence – in cricket. India is said to account for around 90% of the game’s global revenue, dwarfing the older and more established cricket-playing countries. And with his annual income 771 million dollars in 2021-22, BCCI is the richest cricket body in the world.
India also pioneered the Twenty20 (T20) revolution in world cricket, attracting an even larger audience with a shortened (three-hour) version of the game. T20 is now the most profitable form of cricket, with the hugely popular Indian Premier League (IPL) attracting the world’s best players with multi-million dollar contracts made possible by lucrative sponsorships backed by India’s huge television audience . BCCI’s last five-year deal for IPL rights amounted to 6.2 billion dollars.
![PS_Fall-Sale_1333x1000_Onsite-2](https://webapi.project-syndicate.org/library/604a18991754fe843b42f46eba3dbc98.16-9-medium.1.png)
![PS_Fall-Sale_1333x1000_Onsite-2](https://webapi.project-syndicate.org/library/604a18991754fe843b42f46eba3dbc98.16-9-medium.1.png)
Fall Sale: Save 40% on a new POSTSCRIPT subscription
For a limited time, you can get more access to Project Syndicate – including every new one POSTSCRIPT comment, the entire On Point suite of exclusive content for subscribers, complete POSTSCRIPT file and more – starting from just $84.99 $49.99 for your first year.
As the World Cup kicks off, Indian stocks are already booming. A Bloomberg index of stocks related to the tournament up 20% in the three months before the start of the event. Air tickets to cities where India is scheduled to play have doubled on match days, and fares to Ahmedabad have increased by 415%. Overall, the World Cup could boost the economy the most 2.6 billion dollars.
India’s financial dominance of cricket brings with it a disproportionate influence on the sport worldwide. Jaitley once told me that India’s influence on the International Cricket Council (ICC), the game’s global governing body, was similar to that of the United States on the United Nations Security Council.
The BCCI was able to mold world cricket schedules to suit India’s interests, especially by guaranteeing a window for the IPL when all players would be available. It has a large say in international debates about future planning, the evolving rules of the sport and the distribution of global revenue. india will get 38.5% of the ICC’s most recent $3 billion media rights agreement.
Similarly, when India refused to send its players to Pakistan to participate in this year’s Asia Cup, the Pakistan cricket board had no choice but to acquiesce to India’s demand that most matches be moved to Sri Lanka. Pakistan remained the host country of the tournament, but only in name.
Cricket relations between India and Pakistan – both powerhouses of the sport – have been effectively suspended since the 2008 Mumbai attacks by Pakistani terrorists. Although a bilateral series took place in India in 2012-13, India has consistently refused to send its players to Pakistan.
Furthermore, Pakistani players have not played in the IPL since 2008 and are unlikely to be called upon to do so until relations with India improve. The two countries meet only in international tournaments – opportunities that Pakistan craves given the colossal revenue that comes from India.
The upcoming World Cup match between India and Pakistan – scheduled for October 14 – is thus the hottest ticket of the year. The event will unfold, unsurprisingly, at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The room rates in Ahmedabad hotels have rose 300% for the days around the match, and the world is finding it’s cheaper to go into a hospital for an emergency overnight check-up than to find a hotel to sleep on race days. There are no flights available.
An Indian victory in that game will be seen as yet another feather in Modi’s cap and another sign of India’s unstoppable rise. An Indian defeat, however, would likely inflame the BJP’s Hindu-chauvinist supporters. India’s Muslim players themselves – there are two in the 15-man squad – may face accusations of insufficient dedication to the national cause.
The stakes are much higher for everyone than the simple matter of who plays better would suggest. In India, cricket is much more than a sport. It is also a political tool, a lucrative industry, a source of prestige and a powerful lever for exerting global influence.