India and England: conflicting cultures

Boria Majumdar, the author of various books on Indian cricket, writes a fascinating article on the contrasting cultures of England and India.

It is cricket's worst kept secret - that English players were averse to touring the sub-continent until not very long ago. The Indian public missed out on Holmes, Sutcliffe, Wooley and Hammond in 1934. Trueman, Statham, May, Graveney and Bailey all pulled out in 1961-2.

The timing of this piece might cause a stir, given half of England's team have flown home. But he makes some valid and interesting points, not least about Indian sides who toured England

 

Soon after the Indians arrived for a series in 1932, the Evening Standard commented: "There has never been such a team of contrasts meeting on the common footing of cricket."

 

"The 18 players speak eight to 10 languages, belong to four or five different castes, some may not eat this and some may not eat that, a few are denied smoking by their religious laws.
 

 

"Some similarly have drink proscribed; they are captained by a Maharajah rich beyond the dreams of county cricket treasurers.

 

"Some come from the plains where cold is almost unknown, and others from the hills where the climate has insured them even to an English summer."

Fascinating to think our cultures were so vastly different not so long ago. And yet I know for a fact that even now, some teams and players are vary wary of touring the subcontinent. Why? I don't know. I've yet to visit India or Pakistan or indeed any of the subcontinent - and I can't wait - so I'm not fully qualified to argue either way.

"The Shift", as Majumdar says, started in the 1990s with the realisation that the subcontinent had an audience of tens of millions, far more than any other country. An audience of that size brought fervent marketing and a monopoly over advertising; indeed, in 2005 the ICC moved its headquarters from Britain to Dubai.

India is now the centre of the cricketing world, both geographically and metaphorically. With its recent withdrawal from the Champions Trophy, some questioned whether it was getting rather too big for its boots which my Editor, Sambit Bal, put far more eloquently than I can:

But at the same time, to be taken seriously as a leader, India must learn to behave like one. It is justified in seeking to redress the imbalance in the international calendar, which it finds discriminatory and inimical to its interests, but it must assure the international cricket community that it is prepared to think beyond itself and put its might behind causes that transcend commerce. That sport is big business today is an inescapable reality. But it must not be lost on anyone that there is a fundamental difference between sport and business. Money may be sport's biggest driver, but it is not its soul; cricket needs to make money in order to exist, but it doesn't exist to make money.

Cricketers may not want to go to India for reasons of their own choosing. They now have to and it's in their monetary interests to do so. The balance of power has shifted, and dramatically so.

Will Luke writes for Cricinfo.com and edits The Corridor of Uncertainty