NEW DELHI: “I prefer cricket, personally.”
There it was. All the other social media messages had been nice—people were excited I was heading to India.
But trust an upper class Englishman to mock the IPL.
“I prefer cricket.”
Such a gentle, yet sarcastic jab. Such a typically English thing to say.
The implication could not be clearer: in his opinion the Indian Premier League is not real cricket. Too brash, too many sixes, too contrived…maybe even too successful.
Some people in my own country of Australia feel the same way. And, to my surprise, since being here I have discovered even some Indians agree.
Well, I have a message for all who hold such a view.
From the moment I entered the Arjun Jaitley Stadium it was clear this was “real” cricket. Louder, busier, more frenetic and with more reverse ramps over fly slip than usual maybe, but definitely cricket. Glorious, familiar, life-affirming cricket, as it has been played for centuries.
Fast bowlers hurtled in, spinners used guile, some shots were crisp, some mistimed and some spectacular. The fielding ranged from the brilliant to the inept; the crowd cheered and groaned.
The sinking feeling I got as my—and Delhi’s—new favourite, Jake Fraser-McGurk was caught for a duck was proof alone that this was the cricket I have watched all my life.
There are differences in watching cricket here of course.
The Delhi players’ bus arriving with a full police escort, sirens and all, was something new.
Not having beer on sale was new too, and actually a welcome change. For some Aussies (not me, I hasten to add) a day at the cricket is seen as a challenge to maintain a beer rate above the run rate and by the end of play you wonder if they even know the score!
At the Kotla, the only beverage I consumed was a litre of water, which I drank in nearly one gulp in the 40-degree evening haze.
One of the biggest shocks was the sheer volume of people outside the stadium, with vehicles of all description darting through every gap, horns honking continuously.
The scale dwarfs everything I am used to: days later while watching the Bangalore-Chennai game on television my hosts chortled when I told them that the view count of nearly 50 crore was about 20 times the population of Australia.
And that is the final and best difference of all: it is such an unbridled joy to be in a country where cricket is the undisputed king, firmly at the centre of the country’s cultural life. I feel so at home and wonder why I did not come here sooner!
“Real” cricket can take many forms. White clothing, red balls, moss cropped lawns and a scoring rate of 2.3 runs per over—I love all that too, but that style of cricket does not have a mortgage on the term.
The IPL is real cricket too—but of course, you already knew that!