How I became a cricket fan

Two nights ago India won the Cricket World Cup Finals!!!!!!1!

...and I actually cared.

Yes, I have become (probably temporarily) a cricket fan. A fan of a sport with which I used to confuse croquet (the names are similar and both games are British, ok?).

Despite popular belief in the US, cricket is not the British Commonwealth's version of baseball (though it does appear to be played only in Commonwealth countries). It's pretty different, and perhaps smarter. Just because both sports use a bat doesn't mean they're the same. Would you say that lacrosse is the Native American version of field hockey just because both involve sticks and netted goals? Probably not.

Anyway, my first-ever cricket experience was in fall 2007, when I watched a match with Madhavan and other Pondy Uni boys. It was the T-20 World Championship, India vs. Pakistan, and India won. This was the first T-20 championship ever, I believe (T-20 means 20 overs, so the match is shorter; it's a relatively new form of the game that is much faster and more exciting to people like me who (a) don't fully understand what's going on and (b) cannot sit through an all-day sporting event). Madhavan taught me the rules of cricket, and I became acquainted with Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni, and Yuvraj Singh, who was a particular beast in that tournament, and other major players. I had a blast watching the game with my friends in Kalapet's closest thing to a sports bar, and then the whole country literally had a blast--or rather, thousands of blasts--when they celebrated with fireworks (their usual M.O.). I even bought a commemorative poster of the winning team.

Admittedly, I never watched a cricket match since then. I securely stored that game and my newly-acquired cricket knowledge in my Pondy Uni memory bank and hung the poster on my dorm wall, and went back to enjoying the American sports I grew up playing and watching. I did try to go to an Indian Premier League (IPL) game in Delhi with Alice, but, uh, that didn't end so well and we missed the game.

I neglected the sport for another eleven months, until this year's World Cup tournament, when the excitement was impossible to ignore.

I have become a fan of cricket because of the way the sport brings people together, at least in India. I can't think of any sport that could bring Americans together the way cricket has brought Indians together. Every single Indian, at home and abroad, was cheering for the cricket team in this World Cup. Do Americans, as an entire nation, ever rally around one team? Half the country doesn't pay attention to the Olympics, and those who do are all watching different sports. When Americans watch the soccer/football World Cup, they are cheering for a variety of teams, including European and Latin American teams. Few people seem to seriously care about the US soccer team. (This is actually one of my pet peeves: Americans who never care about soccer until all of a sudden "omg Portugal!!" and it's like um 1. you never watch soccer in the four-year span of time between World Cups and 2. you're not even cheering for your own country, or maybe you are but really you act like you care more about other teams.*) I guess the closest example of when Americans banded together around a sport was the 1980 Olympic hockey final against Russia, but honestly I suspect that the movie "Miracle" dramatized the reality (hockey is one of the less popular sports in the US, and as my mom says, she and her friends didn't even bother to watch the game). Basically, I can't think of any single global sports tournament in which the entire American population feels heavily invested.

Walking down the street during the India-Pakistan semifinal match was like walking through a real-life movie. (I didn't watch the entire match because I just can't watch cricket for 8 hours. I'm not quite there yet.) Half the businesses were closed because the owners were at home watching the game, and the other half that were open had brought a TV into their shops, and small crowds had gathered to watch. The subzi- and phal-wale (vegetable and fruit salesmen) at a street corner near my favorite cafe were all huddled around a small black-and-white TV that had somehow been connected outdoors. Rickshaw-wale (rickshaw drivers) were also huddled around their own tiny outdoor TV. Every pair of eyes and/or ears (some people only have radios) in India was glued to the match. Whenever there was a big play, a collective "wooo!" of excitement or "aaah" of disappointment, an aggregated sound coming from all voices in the country simultaneously, could be heard, sometimes along with dholak (drum) beats.

The millisecond the Ind-Pak game ended with an Indian victory, the entire country erupted in celebration. Immediately, people flooded the streets to light firecrackers, like Diwali to the extreme. An entire nation was partying together.

This was all repeated during the India-Sri Lanka final two days ago. After Dhoni hit the final 6, I partook in the festivities, racing out to the streets of Varanasi with my host family to ignite firecrackers. That these matches took place on Indian soil (semifinals in Mohali near Chandigarh, finals in Mumbai) makes the wins even more special.

I find something simply magical about all this. It's more than about cricket. It's about spirit, about pride in one's country. Say what you will about Indians, they are a proud bunch of people. (It's also about politics, especially against Pakistan. In general, Indians have a love-hate relationship with their politics, but no matter if they're loving or hating, they're addicted.)

Something else I have found very interesting is the reaction on Facebook. Foreign-born South Asians are exclaiming excitement via their statuses just as much as South Asian-born South Asians (at least among my group of Facebook friends). I find this interesting because I didn't expect Indian-Americans to be following the Cricket World Cup. After all, does cricket even air on TV in the US? Is there even a cricket Little League? When and how would these Americans have become familiar with the sport? I would have assumed that because they grew up in the US they would be more interested in American sports (and maybe many of them are more interested in basketball or football than they are in cricket), but I'm pleasantly surprised to find that many of them are just as interested in a decidedly non-American sport.

The fact that they are following cricket means that they must have grown up watching cricket with their fathers, who probably watch cricket as one of several means to stay connected to the motherland. I'm sure that Indian parents struggle to raise their children in America according to Indian values and culture, but one thing many of them have been successful at is instilling a love of cricket, in a culture where cricket doesn't even exist. This cricket victory was important to more than Indian-born Indians. It was important to the Indian diaspora as well, to the entire Indian people. (What, exactly, is this importance? I'll leave that analysis to the NYTimes. See here.)

Now for a nice little story to end this ridiculously long post (sorry for the length!):

Yesterday morning, as I was taking a rickshaw to my Hindi class, I passed a parade of green, white, and orange face-painted people carrying a homemade styrofoam-and-glitter replica of the World Cup trophy, waving Indian flags of all sizes, dancing to the song "Chak De India" accompanied by dholak players, and lighting firecrackers. As this parade winded through the galiyaan (alleys) of Varanasi, the crowd would grow ever larger, with more and more people from all castes and classes dancing together around the poorly-but-very-lovingly-constructed trophy.

When I saw this parade, I did the most unexpected thing: I started crying. Not just crying. SOBBING. The rickshaw-wallah stopped and looked at me to check if everything was ok. I was fine, I insisted. But I wasn't. I was crying because it suddenly hit me that I'm actually leaving India in a few months. I don't know why seeing this parade triggered that realization, but as a result I was a mess all day yesterday. I just can't handle leaving this country. Another reason for my tears was that this makeshift trophy brought back memories of home. This was something I could see my brother Ben doing when he was young. Seven-year-old Ben absolutely would have made some little Stanley Cup trophy and trotted around the house with it in a Capitals jersey (he didn't actually do this, but he did several similar things, such as making himself a Chicago Bulls NBA championship ring. Kids can be adorable). So while the parade made me sad that I was leaving India, it also made me realize how homesick I am. Opposite and confusing emotions, I know.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures because, well, I suck. I don't take my camera with me when I walk around Varanasi. Fail. However, you can enjoy this picture I stole from AP:

Indians celebrate with fireworks in the streets.

*You could say this applies to me re: cricket and India. However, the US does not have a cricket team that plays at World Cup level (Molly informs me the US has a cricket team, mostly comprised of South Asian immigrants, but they can't compete at a high level). If it did, obviously I would cheer for the US. Also, I have been living in India for two years and I believe that gives me sufficient ties to be an India fan. If you're an American who cheers for another country in the soccer/football World Cup because you spent some time there or have other connections, then you do not fall into the category of people who bother me and I apologize if I have offended you.