It started as an ordinary cricket match, but as the hours drifted by, it evolved into a uniquely Indian affair that showed why Calcutta’s Eden Gardens is considered one of the great cricket stadiums and home to the world’s most passionate fans.

First came the Wave 120,000 Indians leaping to their feet, raising their arms to the heavens and shouting in unison, Then came the showers of firecrackers, bottle rockets and flan’s in the stands and on the field in the middle of the game or more precisely, throughout the entire game. Finally, when India thrashed the West Indies by 102 runs in November to capture its first major international cricket tournament at home, tens of thousands of euphoric spectator: chanting “In-dya! In-dya!”—rolled up newspapers, Set them ablaze and held them torchlike above their heads. Sheets of fire floated about the stadium and orange flames flickered in the stands.

“You will not find a crowd like this anywhere in the world they’re really fanatic,” West Indies captain Richie Richardson said after the match which culminated the 13-game, five-country Hero Cup tournament. “Indians worship cricket and their cricketers are like gods to them.”

“The cult of cricket and Eden Gardens go hand-in-glove, said Krish Mackerthuj, president of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, which lost to India in the semifinals.

“If you had a stadium for 200,000 or. 500,000, for a match like this, it would be full, and that wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world,” he said. And all the burning paper at the end it’s shocking, and at first you’re a bit harsh, but later you realize people have different ways of sending the message they’re happy their team won.”

For many Indians, cricket is the nest legacy of the British Raj in recent years, the game has supplanted field hockey as India’s national pastime. On weekends, parks and vacant lots are crammed with cricket marches, City alleys from Bombay to Delhi tem with children playing cricket between the passing cars and motorbikes. In rural villages, boys pound stakes into the middle of fields or commandeer dusty roads and transform then in to instant cricket grounds The sport one of the few India competes in at a world-class level, has become an intense source of national pride and 4 rallying point for the country, which comes to a virtual standstill on big-game days, Matches with Pakistan— most of which have been canceled in recent years for security reasons—are a sort of surrogate for the war no one wants, similar to the way U.S.-Soviet basketball games were perceived as tests of superpower prowess.

A game between Pakistan and India in England in the fall was stopped because of fighting between the fans, and the Pakistan team dropped out of the Hero Cup when Bal Thackeray, head of India’s militant Hindu Shiv Sena party, said Pakistani players would not be allowed on Indian soil. The events have called into question whether the 1996 World Cup, scheduled to be hosted Jointly by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, can be held on the subcontinents India’s cricket madness began in the early 1800s, when the country’s British rulers needed cricket teams to play against and Suited up Indian squads, according to Narrottam Pun, one of India’s top sports authorities and cricket commentators, Indian traders were the first 10 play the game because it helped them develop British business contacts, “Once they were seen playing with the rulers, their whole stock in society rose up.” Puri said, and gradually the sport became a son of social equalizer.

Sociologist As his Nandy, who has written a book on cricket, said, “It’s an Indian game that was mistakenly brought by the British, and it’s an unpredictable game where the variables are so many, where there are negotiations with fate, and we are playing not with an opponent but with our own destiny. That clicks with the Indian self-conscience, the South Asian way of looking at the world and our own fate.”

“When someone says, ‘It’s not cricket,” that means you’re not playing fairly and properly and according to the rules,” said South Africa’s Mackerthuj, “Cricket is a way of life itself, and the rules have a total effect both on and off the field.”

Article extracted from this publication >> July 15, 1994