“When Sachin played, life happened.” Facebook posts of this nature are common in a country where the little master enjoyed an almost cult following from millions of supporters who rooted for his each run, cried with his each failure. Such is the effect of Sachin within our society that he became the youngest recipient of the Bharat Ratna award last year post retirement.
I started with the example of Sachin because sporting icons like Viswanathan Anand, Mary Kom, Pankaj Advani etc has reached epic heights in their own respective sports but they never enjoyed even a fraction of mass following Sachin Tendulkar continues to receive till date. What explains this phenomenon is the fact that Sachin played a far more popular sports, cricket.
History of Cricket in India
Now to the question of reason behind popularity of cricket in India it is certainly amazing that a sports primarily started by the white sahibs of UK to enjoy their time in a leisurely manner has found its most devoted followers here. In the beginning the game flourished among the rich and the mighty thanks to patronage of their colonial masters. India even before gaining Independence started playing test cricket from 1932.
A significant spike in popularity came post-Independence. For a new country still bearing the brunt of partition with a large proportion of the population poor and helpless, win in popular sports like cricket and hockey came as a balm of patriotism to forget all the pains.
India which won its first test match in 1952 was fortunate to be blessed with exceptional players even when sports was played at handful of cities and with very little infrastructure. Wins in foreign land was hard to come by yet when it came like those in England under Ajit Wadekar in 1971 and that in West Indies courtesy double century by Sunil Gavaskar the common folks turned hysteric. Back home the team scripted many a history thanks to fabled spin quartet of Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkatragavan. As dedicated fan bases compared between solidity of Gavaskar to subtlety of Gundappa Viswanath cricket slowly was en route to become the most popular sport in India.
“When Sachin played, life happened.” Facebook posts of this nature are common in a country where the little master enjoyed an almost cult following from millions of supporters who rooted for his each run, cried with his each failure. Such is the effect of Sachin within our society that he became the youngest recipient of the Bharat Ratna award last year post retirement.
I started with the example of Sachin because sporting icons like Viswanathan Anand, Mary Kom, Pankaj Advani etc has reached epic heights in their own respective sports but they never enjoyed even a fraction of mass following Sachin Tendulkar continues to receive till date. What explains this phenomenon is the fact that Sachin played a far more popular sports, cricket.
History of Cricket in India
Now to the question of reason behind popularity of cricket in India it is certainly amazing that a sports primarily started by the white sahibs of UK to enjoy their time in a leisurely manner has found its most devoted followers here. In the beginning the game flourished among the rich and the mighty thanks to patronage of their colonial masters. India even before gaining Independence started playing test cricket from 1932.
A significant spike in popularity came post-Independence. For a new country still bearing the brunt of partition with a large proportion of the population poor and helpless, win in popular sports like cricket and hockey came as a balm of patriotism to forget all the pains.
India which won its first test match in 1952 was fortunate to be blessed with exceptional players even when sports was played at handful of cities and with very little infrastructure. Wins in foreign land was hard to come by yet when it came like those in England under Ajit Wadekar in 1971 and that in West Indies courtesy double century by Sunil Gavaskar the common folks turned hysteric. Back home the team scripted many a history thanks to fabled spin quartet of Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkatragavan. As dedicated fan bases compared between solidity of Gavaskar to subtlety of Gundappa Viswanath cricket slowly was en route to become the most popular sport in India.
