Indian cricket changed overnight. All it took was the excitement and energy following one victory: India's World Cup win on 25 June 1983. That evening, what used to be a mere sport was converted into a lucrative career option, and cricketers into default national icons. And from then on Indians – and along with them, the rest of the region – began to look to cricket as both a relaxant and something into which to channel their energies, patriotic and otherwise. Soon enough, the corporate world would take note – and the rest of the world would follow.
Cricket has been played in the Subcontinent since at least the early 18th century, but it was only around the close of the 19th century that the game began to assume particular significance in the region. With the inception of an influential cricket series in Bombay in 1892, the game's popularity increased, and by the 1930s, the Pentangular matches (so-called for their inclusion of Europeans, Parsis, Hindus, Muslims and 'the rest') were being viewed by 25,000 or more spectators. The Indian Cricket Board was formed in 1928, and India played its first Test match at Lords, in London, on 25 June 1932.
But it was only after India's triumph in 1983 that the game came to be perceived as a viable path to fame and income for middle- and lower-middle-class Indians. That victory paved the way for corporate sponsors to invest in cricket, in anticipation of rich dividends. It also gave the media events for it to build hype around, and cricket proved a salve for a troubled nation. Today, no hyperbole can capture the importance of cricket in the everyday life of the country. And the reason for this can be traced to one of modern India's most sensitive disconnects: India is the world's second-most populous country, but its global presence remains relatively less significant. On the political stage and the economic front, although desperately trying to edge herself into the circle of super powers, India has not quite made it.
This marginality is especially prominent in sport. In the past two summer Olympics, the Indian tri-colour was hoisted in victory only once. India has never won a gold medal in a non-team sport in the Olympics. As Indians turn their attention to cricket, however, the narrative of 'catching up' suddenly disappears. Cricket is the only realm where Indians, for the past two decades, have consistently – the World Cup debacle in the West Indies this March notwithstanding – been able to flex their muscle. It is India's only crack at world domination. Clearly, the widely voiced aphorism is true: for Indians, cricket is much more than a game.