What is Cricket?
From an Indian perspective
I am from India, so it should be pretty much a given that I am obsessed with cricket, a British import to India that has overtaken hockey (India’s national sport) and many other regional sports to become the most popular sport in India. Just like me, almost 124 million people call themselves cricket fans, 91 percent of the total sports fans in India; in other words, nine out of ten sports fans in India are cricket fans. Kabaddi, a regional contact sport, comes in second on the list of most popular sports with a fan following of 28 million, merely one-fourth of the cricket fans in India.
On a global scale, cricket is ranked second on the Top-10 list of the World’s Most Popular Sports with an estimated fan following of 2.5 billion, mainly from Sub-continent countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan; Australia; UK; and the Caribbean Islands, behind soccer, which has an estimated fan following of almost 3.5 billion mainly from regions like Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.
Cricket set foot in India in 1721; the first-ever game was a match between sailors in Western India. Since then, nearly after three centuries, cricket has overtaken every other regional sport in India to become the most popular and wealthy sport in India – cricketers in India are among the wealthiest individuals and often treated like celebrities, and, at times, are also idealized as gods. But it was not until the last decade when India became a cricket-crazy country, all credit to the advent of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a shorter, expedited version of the game, with only 20 overs that lasted for about three hours in total, as compared to the more typical, orthodox form of the game that lasted for almost nine hours, or in some cases, for five whole days. The T20 version of the game ensured thrill and excitement, breaking the stereotype of cricket's sluggishness. The switch attracted more youth to the game than ever before and brought along renewed freshness, which revolutionized the game - there has been no turning back since then.
