We are cricket-crazy and partisan, not Nazis. Stop demonising Gujarat crowd

While it's not a good idea to bring religion into the game, all competitive sport is about passion. To expect a crowd to not be heavily partisan, particularly when India and Pakistan play on each other's turf, is a fantasy.

Illustration: Soham Sen/ ThePrint

The India-Pakistan match at Ahmedabad in the ongoing Cricket World Cup was a week ago. As cricketing action goes, it was a “phuss” or what, in the more polite English description, would be called a damp squib. The crowds, however, didn’t think so. For them, as for any partisan, the more one-sided the game, the better. As long as their side was winning.

Three important debating points, however, endured. At the end of the day, the crowd, not the winning Indian team, became the story, and not just because some people greeted Pakistani wicket-keeper batter Mohammad Rizwan with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ on his way to the pavilion. It drew revulsion from the liberal constituency in India, not least because the game was in Gujarat and in the new Narendra Modi Stadium with Amit Shah in attendance.

The question it left behind: Should religious chants have any place in any playground, least of all in a game that is often called the real religion in the subcontinent? Aren’t we communalising a mere sport?

Let me get my opinion out of the way even before we go deeper into the argument. No, it is definitely not a good idea to bring religion into sport. Nationalism, even can-kill-for-my-club football-style loyalties, is about as far as one should go. That ‘should,’ however, is not written in any law or convention. More on that later.

A somewhat more substantive cricketing question was raised by the Pakistani coach, South African-Australian Mickey Arthur. He was polite in his post-match press conference, mostly making cricketing points with humility, and then laid some of the blame for his team’s poor day on the partisan crowd: It hurt that Pakistani fans were missing, it felt like a bilateral game instead of an ICC tournament, and there was no ‘dil, dil, Pakistan’ (my heart and life with Pakistan, the favoured chant across the border, like our ‘Indiaaaa, Indiaaaah’).

The important thing is, his complaint wasn’t about the cricketing aspects of the conditions that favour a home team: the pitch, outfield, breeze or lights. His complaint was about the atmosphere.

Now, we understand the stresses Pakistani cricket coaches live with, especially after the mystery death of one of their predecessors (Bob Woolmer, found dead in his hotel room in Jamaica a day after Pakistan were knocked out of the 2007 World Cup). It is tough to be responsible for the team of probably the most passionate cricketing nation in the world. But to expect the crowd to be even a little bit even-handed in India is a stretch. And to expect ‘dil, dil, Pakistan’ on a PA system in an Indian cricket ground is a fantasy.

That said, the argument that many sensible Pakistanis make has substance: It would only have been fair, and good for the tournament, if at least a few hundred — if not more — Pakistani fans had been given visas to come and watch. This is, after all, an ICC tournament, and every participating team should have the right to see their fans in the stadium.

We know that India-Pakistan visas are a rough issue and subject to much competitive cussedness. As hosts, India could be large hearted.

Whatever the coach’s excuses, the Pakistani cricketers are consummate professionals and experienced at playing in tough conditions. Ask the Indian team. This lot have not played in Pakistan, but they have won two consecutive series in Australia where crowds can be every bit as partisan as anywhere. In Ahmedabad, however, no beer is available. Nor in all of “dry” Gujarat, at least legally. They will be playing in front of fully Indian crowds across these six weeks, and if you think you can write them off, I’d counsel caution.

The third debating point came from Australian Gideon Haigh, probably the finest and most respected cricket writer in the world today, Shane Warne’s biographer and for long an admirer of the rise of Indian cricket. A clip from a discussion has gone viral where he expresses shock —and if I may say so, laced with derision — at the crowd in Ahmedabad.

The sea of blue shirts in the packed stands, he said somewhat unthinkingly, looked like a Nuremberg rally. Now, we know that the Modi-Shah BJP, their government and the leadership of the BCCI with Jay Shah are all facts that trigger many across the cricketing world. But to demonise a ticket-buying crowd of fans as blue-shirted, 21st-century Nazis?

All competitive sport is about passion. It is passion that makes fans pay for tickets, buy TV subscriptions and brands plugged by their stars: soaps, shampoos, deodorants-sold-as-perfumes, paan masala, insurance and bank loans.

All this adds up to the riches, in this case, of the BCCI, and by implication the International Cricket Council (ICC) and cricketing bodies across the world. No sport can survive without passion, and passion is about partisanship. It can be about the country, club, or even individuals. Think Nadal versus Federer.

Can you judge 1 lakh paying fans just because they happened to be in Modi’s state, and likely predominantly his voters? Can you call them blue-shirted Nazis? Imagine the sea of red shirts at Old Trafford when Manchester United play. The crowd will be noisier, beer-addled, and in red shirts. Nuremberg rally?

After a long freeze post the early 1960s, India and Pakistan resumed playing in each other’s country from the mid-late 1970s onwards. In the 45 years since, our bilateral relationship has gone up and down several times. The crowd response, the level of partisanship, has also varied with this.

There is much talk of the Chennai crowd staying back to celebrate the Pakistani victory in a nail-biter of a Test match in January 1999. This was during a period of India-Pakistan détente, and Vajpayee was riding that bus to Lahore soon after. Again, the Indian team was greeted warmly, even popularly hailed for its victories in Pakistan in the 2003-4 series, because Musharraf and Vajpayee had just signed a peace deal that looked good at that point. On the other hand, I saw a bit of the 1989-90 series in Pakistan, and the crowds were the nastiest you’ve seen anywhere. The Ahmedabadis will need a long way to go to rival them. I hope they won’t.

The chant that still echoes in my mind: ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya, la ilaha illa Allah/Hindustan ka matlab kya, bhaad mein jaaye, hum ko kya (What’s the meaning of Pakistan: There is no god but one god and his name is Allah/What’s the meaning of India: It can go burn in hell for all we care)’.

Simultaneously, the Hockey World Cup was also being played in Lahore. In any match where India played, the chants were even worse. And that persistent ‘hilti huyi deewar hai, ek dhakka aur do (it is a shaking wall, give it just one more push)’. India finished 10th in a field of 12. I didn’t hear them blame the partisan crowds for it.

The fact is, the crowds were equally partisan and backed every other rival India played in the league. That’s how the crowds are when your nations have a broken relationship. That’s when the insurgency in Kashmir had begun, Pandits were being thrown out, terrorism in Punjab was at its worst, the Soviets were retreating from Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis thought they were winning at more than cricket or hockey.

At which point, we return to the first complaint. That some in Ahmedabad chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’, thereby bringing religion into sport. We also need to ask an inconvenient question, however. Which was the first cricketing country that did this, and persists in doing so?

Look around the subcontinent. Bangladesh don’t do it. Afghanistan, the most loved and admired team in this World Cup — obviously with the exception of India — don’t do it.

Now that the hesitations and niceties are gone, black-and-white videos are emerging of the Pakistani team celebrating victory in that January 1999 Chennai Test with “naara e takbir, Allahu Akbar”. For decades, Pakistani centurions in cricket and winners in hockey against India have bent in prayer.

When Rizwan did so in Dubai during that T-20 win against India in 2021, Waqar Younis celebrated it on television by saying how gratifying he found the fact that Rizwan could say his namaz in the midst of Hindus. He might have apologised later, and has been forgiven to the extent that he is on the TV commentary team in India now. If the same Rizwan was now greeted with that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ chant, you can add two and two.

All this said, the more India and Pakistan play, the more these edges will smoothen. Who knows, on another day — now possible only in the knockout stage — India and Pakistan may play again. If the result is different (which I hope not), it will be because the Pakistanis played well. Not in spite of the crowds. And you can be sure, they will kneel in prayer. Religion in sport, anybody?