Last week, my children wanted me to take them for the Indian Premier League (IPL) match at Bangalore between Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). My friend Divya Srinivasan was kind enough to get us the tickets at a very short notice (less than 3 hours!!!).
Since we decided to show off our support to our local team (RCB), on the way to the stadium picked up the RCB jersey and caps. When we entered the Chinnaswamy Stadium, it was filled with enthusiastic 35000 to 40000 cricket fans. Even though it was a cloudy evening, the temperature started heating up as the match started. I was amazed to see youngsters in large numbers to cheer their “GODS”. When two teams are playing, normally we can see some group supporting one team and some supporting the opponent. For a change, everyone started cheering for Chris Gayle even though there were many great Indian national players in both teams who are currently representing the country in all versions of the cricket – be it Twenty20; One Day or Test Match.
I also started shouting Chris Gayle’s name with others (mob syndrome…). For a second my profession made me to think why everyone is shouting the name of a foreign player and not any other national player’s name.
As a lover of this game, I was curiously tracking IPL from its inception. The curiosity increased year after year, because of two reasons – many conservative cricket friends told me it will not succeed; secondly this version of the game had a healthy mix of overseas and Indian players, which is an experiment in this game.
As immigration professional first and an avid cricket follower later, am keenly watching how migration can significantly contribute to the success of the sports and earn recognition for the country. This is what really happened during the recently concluded cricket World Cup. More interestingly, nine of the fourteen countries which participated in the 2011 world cup cricket had foreign coaches, largely either from Australia or West Indies, the two countries that have own the world cup titles most often.