Cricket: It Is More Than an Insect

A crowd of Indian men watch Sunday's India-England Cricket World Cup match outside a TV store near our guesthouse.

I cannot imagine many Americans liking cricket, a sport in which teams can play for more than eight hours and still end in a tie, but India goes crazy for it. In fact, the Subcontinent is widely acknowledged as the premier venue for cricket. And though England invented the sport, the British Empire’s former colonial holdings—India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia—have come to dominate the modern game.

I fact, England has never won the International Cricket Council-sponsored Cricket World Cup since it began in 1975. India won its only Cup in 1983. Australia has won the last three Cups and comes into the 2011 version slotted number one in the world rankings. Though many commentators have been arguing that India (the world No. 2) is the favorite because India is hosting this year’s event.

With all that as background, India played England today in Bangalore in a World Cup match that, I have to admit, was quite exciting but ultimately disappointing because at the end of nearly nine hours of play, the teams tied. This, in fact, is quite remarkable. Without getting too much into the intricacies of cricket, I can say that both teams scored exactly 338 runs. I know little of these things, but the TV announcers were atwitter, saying things like “Legendary match!” and “Unbelievable, unforgettable event!”

Jenna and I ventured out into Calcutta today, wondering if maybe we could find a sports bar in which to watch the match. We felt it would do us good to experience it in the midst of a crowd of frantic Indian partisans. There was no luck, though, in finding such a place. India dearly lacks a ‘sports bar’ culture.

We did, however, find, crowds of young men standing in tight huddles outside TV stores, peering in through the glass windows at the flat-screen Panasonics broadcasting the match. Chai-wallahs would take advantage and pull up to these small crowds with their iron pots and dole out scalding cups of tea to the onlookers.

Save for these isolated flocks of cricket fans, the streets of India’s second-biggest city were pleasingly quiet, preternaturally devoid of foot traffic. Jenna and I had a fine time strolling down Park Street, one of Calcutta’s most commercial lanes. Empty sidewalks and shuttered store fronts are all we saw.

The length of a cricket match makes it an affair in which you can come and go at your leisure. Take a walk. Go grocery shopping. Run an errand. Do some work. And you can still flip on the TV and find half the match is yet to be played. This laconic pace also makes the big moments—when a batter gets out, for instance—all the more exciting. It is kind of like when goals are scored in soccer. The American sports psyche has never well adjusted to such games, where long bouts of dull play are punctuated by a few quick moments of intensity. We like our action to be constant and frenetic. It is no mistake that the US does not field a cricket team for the World Cup.

On the other hand, India’s culture makes her citizens particularly well-suited for cricket’s circuitous format. After all, this is the same country that has as one of its most popular television broadcasts a 94-part dramatization of the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, which was laid out on Indian cable over the course of nearly two years. Viewed in that light, a nine-our cricket match seems rather fleeting.