by Cricket is just a game in India: critics accuse ruling party politicians and the sport’s tightly-connected mega-rich board of exploiting its massive popularity for electoral advantage.
India begins voting in a six-week general election on Friday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) widely expected to go on to a third term in power.
Modi’s BJP is closely tied to the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and commentators have said the ruling party has tried to co-opt the sport as a tool to oust its political opponents.
Veteran cricket journalist Sharda Ugra said the sport is being used “as a vehicle for muscular nationalism”.
“Control is exercised not only by the presence of senior officials associated with the ruling party, but by using Indian cricket to promote their political messages,” she told AFP.
Modi’s government is far from the first administration to use cricket for political gain in India, but his populist BJP has tightened those ties further than any other, Ugra said.
BCCI chief Jay Shah is the son of home minister Amit Shah, Modi’s right-hand man and himself a former president of the Gujarat state cricket board.
Arun Dhumal, brother of sports minister Anurag Thakur, former BCCI chief, is the chairman of the money-spinning Indian Premier League.
“The current BCCI is the first Indian cricket administration that is under the control of a single political party, and not under the general control of politicians,” Ugra said.
Gideon Haigh, cricket writer for The Australian newspaper, called the BJP “disgraceful in its own right” for co-opting the sport.
“Cricket is just one of many institutions that he has embraced, although it is the one that means the most to people,” Haigh told AFP.
– Stadiums renamed –
The BJP won state elections in Rajasthan in December, and last month a minister’s son took over the cricket board.
In New Delhi, the capital’s stadium was renamed in 2019 after a BJP stalwart, the late finance minister Arun Jaitley, whose son Rohan Jaitley heads the state cricket board.
For 137 years before that, it was known as the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, after a 14th-century Muslim sultan.
And 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 home win would certainly boost national pride ahead of the election, but India lost in the decider.
Modi entered the dressing room, accompanied by a camera crew, to welcome the Indian team. “It happens,” he told them. “Keep smiling, the country is looking up to you.”
The delay or denial of Indian visas for the tournament to Pakistani arch-rival players and fans has raised some concerns.
Other players of Pakistani heritage – including Australia’s Usman Khawaja and England’s Shoaib Bashir – faced visa challenges during tours from India.
The BCCI did not respond to a series of questions submitted by AFP.
– ‘He looked the other way’ –
Cricket is a lucrative business in the world’s most populous nation of 1.4 billion people.
By some accounts, Indian cricket on average generates more revenue than Bollywood.
The IPL is the richest cricket league in the world and has added to the BCCI’s wealth, with the board selling the broadcast and digital rights of the 2023-27 T20 tournament for $6.2 billion.
Commentators say the BCCI’s wealth and reach enable it to pull strings on cricket’s world governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC).
More than 90 percent of the sport’s billion-plus global fans are in the Indian subcontinent, according to a 2018 ICC study.
In other countries, the ICC has been quick to suspend boards due to political interference, including in Zimbabwe in 2019 and Sri Lanka last year.
ICC rules state that cricket boards must manage their affairs “autonomously” and “ensure that there is no government (or public or quasi-public body) interference in their governance”.
The ICC declined to comment on India’s role.
Modi opened his ground equivalent to 132,000 seats in Ahmedabad in 2020 in a mega-rally for the then US President Donald Trump.
Haigh covered the 2023 India-Australia series and recalled how Modi toured the venue in a golf cart with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese when it hosted the fourth Test.
BJP members, government officials and school children were bussed for the event, applauding as Modi was hitting the centre.
The stadium emptied quickly after the leaders left, even when play started.
“That the ICC – which purports to deplore political interference in cricket – carefully looked the other way tells you all you need to know about its arrest by the BCCI,” said Haigh.
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