Cricket is more than a game in India: Critics accuse ruling party politicians and the sport’s closely connected mega-rich governing body of exploiting its huge popularity for electoral advantage.
India will begin voting on Friday in six-week general elections, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) widely expected to win a third term in power.
Modi’s BJP is intricately linked to the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI); Commentators say the ruling party is trying to co-opt sports as a tool to defeat political rivals.
Veteran cricket journalist Sharda Ugra said the sport was “used as a tool for strong nationalism”.
“Control is exercised not only through the presence of senior officials affiliated with the ruling party, but also through the use of Indian cricket to further their political message,” he told AFP.
Ugra added that the Modi government is not the first government in India to use cricket for political gain, but the populist BJP has strengthened these ties like never before.
BCCI chief Jay Shah is the son of home minister Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man and himself a former chairman of the Gujarat state cricket board.
Arun Dhumal, the chairman of the money-spinning Indian Premier League, is the brother of sports minister Anurag Thakur, who is also a former BCCI president.
“The current BCCI is the first Indian cricket administration under the control of a single political party and not a general cluster of politicians,” Ugra said.
The Australian newspaper’s cricket writer Gideon Haigh said the BJP was “shameless in its own interests” in choosing the sport.
“Cricket is just one of the many institutions it has captured, but it is the most meaningful one for most people,” Haigh told AFP.
– Stadiums renamed –
The BJP won state elections in Rajasthan in December and a minister’s son took charge of the cricket board last month.
In New Delhi, the capital’s stadium was renamed in 2019 after Arun Jaitley, a BJP stalwart finance minister whose son Rohan Jaitley heads the state cricket board.
For the previous 137 years, it was named Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, in memory of a 14th-century Muslim sultan.
When India hosted the ODI World Cup last year, Modi attended the final at the world’s largest cricket stadium (named after him) in Ahmedabad.
A victory at home would undoubtedly have further boosted national pride ahead of the election, but India lost the last one.
Modi went to the dressing room accompanied by a camera crew to embrace the Indian team. “Okay,” he told them. “Keep smiling, the country is looking after you.”
India’s failure or delay in granting visas to arch-rival Pakistani players and fans for the tournament had caused some concerns.
Other players of Pakistani origin, including Australia’s Usman Khawaja and England’s Shoaib Bashir, also faced visa difficulties during their tour of India.
The BCCI did not respond to a series of questions posed by AFP.
-‘I looked the other way’-
Cricket is a lucrative business in the world’s most populous country, home to 1.4 billion people.
According to some calculations, Indian cricket generates more revenue on average than Bollywood.
The IPL is the world’s richest cricket league and has boosted the BCCI’s fortunes with its board selling broadcast and digital rights for the 2023-27 T20 tournament for $6.2 billion.
Commentators say the BCCI’s wealth and reach allows it to retain control of the International Cricket Council (ICC), cricket’s world governing body.
More than 90 percent of the sport’s billion-plus fans worldwide are in the Indian subcontinent, according to a 2018 study by the ICC.
In other countries, the ICC has quickly suspended boards due to political interference, including Zimbabwe in 2019 and Sri Lanka last year.
ICC rules say cricket boards must manage their affairs in an “autonomous” manner and “ensure that there is no interference in their governance by any government (or other public or quasi-public body)”.
The ICC declined to comment on India’s role.
Modi opened his eponymous 132,000-seat venue in Ahmedabad at a mega rally for then US President Donald Trump in 2020.
Haigh covered the 2023 India-Australia series and recalled how Modi toured the venue in a golf cart along with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese when it hosted the fourth Test.
BJP members, government officials and school children were bussed in for the event and cheered as Modi toured the grounds.
Following the leaders’ departure, the stadium quickly emptied as the match began.
“The fact that the ICC, while claiming to deplore political interference in cricket, has studiously looked the other way tells you all you need to know about its takeover by the BCCI,” Haigh said.
bur/pjm/slb/ssy/pst