Ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister in May 2014, the BJP and the RSS have loudly proclaimed their ambition to make our country a ‘Vishwa-Guru’ — Teacher to the World. With every passing month, however, they seem ever further from realising this ambition. However, whatever our failures in international politics, in the sphere of international cricket India is now the most powerful actor. Whether its actions are always or even often to the benefit of cricket is another matter altogether.
Back in 2017, I spent a few months as part of a Supreme Court-appointed ‘Committee of Administrators’ that sought — in the end unavailingly — to bring more accountability and transparency to the activities of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. I found BCCI officials consumed by the desire to bring all other cricketing boards to heel. As a historian, this worried me, since I knew of how, in the past, the imperial arrogance of White nations had rarely worked to the advantage of the game itself. As I wrote in my 2022 book, The Commonwealth of Cricket: "I told my colleagues in the BCCI that English and Australian hegemony had often worked against the larger interests of cricket worldwide. But, I added, so would Indian domination. India, I argued, must not become to international cricket what the United States was to international politics; setting the rules, and disregarding otherwise fair international treaties when it did not suit them."
These (alas totally neglected) warnings came back to me while reading Rod Lyall’s new book, The Club: Empire, Power and the Governance of World Cricket. The book begins with the story of the Imperial Cricket Conference, which was founded in 1909, the brainchild of the imperial mining magnate, Abe Bailey. In its first few decades, the ICC was dominated by England and the White dominions of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. These countries, and especially England, decided how the international game would be run, how new members would or would not be admitted, how tours and series were scheduled, how laws and regulations were framed. Cricketing nations such as India, Pakistan, and the West Indies were treated with condescension and even contempt. They had absolutely no say in how international cricket was administered. This was an imperialist and even racist sporting order. (As late as 1946, the BCCI representative at ICC meetings was a White Englishman.)
In the 1950s and beyond, as the former British colonies became independent nations, their cricketing administrators sought gently to make the ICC more democratic in its functioning. In this endeavour, as Lyall shows, India and Pakistan were often working together, collaboratively, to diminish English and Australian domination. In 1965, the ‘I’ in the ICC changed from ‘Imperial’ to ‘International’, and in 1989 the word, ‘Conference’, was replaced by ‘Council’. In 2005, the ICC headquarters moved from London to Dubai, bringing "the organisation closer to its new powerbase in the subcontinent".
In the latter parts of his book, Lyall turns to how, in recent decades, India has come to dominate how world cricket is administered (as well as maladministered). His account has a few flaws; he doesn’t seem to recognise the importance of India’s 1983 World Cup win, and he insinuates without evidence that the result of the 2011 World Cup final (which was won by India) may have been ‘fixed’.
On the whole, though, Lyall’s treatment of the BCCI’s crudely imperialist ambitions is fair-minded. A rare voice of reason was the former BCCI president and ICC chairman, Shashank Manohar, of whom Lyall remarks that "Manohar was perhaps the one top Indian cricket administrator who was prepared to look beyond the narrow interests of the BCCI". At another point, he says that "Shashank Manohars are thin on the ground and, it seems, especially so in India."
In December 2024, the son of India’s home minister became the ICC chairman. Of Jay Shah’s elevation, Lyall writes: "Once the 'MCC foreign desk', the ICC appears now to become the instrument of an overtly nationalistic Indian political party and its corporatist ambitions. The vultures have indeed come to roost over world cricket’s Tower of Silence." This characterisation is entirely accurate, although perhaps one should replace ‘nationalistic’ with ‘jingoistic’.
The dangers of the BCCI becoming to world cricket what the MCC once was had been presciently seen by Tony Greig. Lyall quotes from a 2012 lecture where the former England captain, Packer rebel and TV commentator identified the major problems facing cricket, among them gambling, bad governance, and the unequal distribution of power among ICC members. Greig thought that "most of the problems can generally be addressed if India invokes and adheres to the spirit of cricket."
Greig acknowledged that for "about the first hundred years cricket was run by England and Australia… Unfortunately, on many occasions self-interest was more important than the spirit of cricket and countries such as India and New Zealand were undoubtedly discriminated against." His hope was that, now it was in charge, "India invoked the spirit of cricket and didn't try and influence its allies in how to vote."
This turned out to be excessively optimistic, as the BCCI has used its financial clout to capture the ICC and dominate its proceedings entirely. It is difficult to disagree with Lyall’s conclusion about the state of affairs with regard to international cricket administration today: "There are some reasons for India’s hegemony: the massive appetite for cricket which unquestionably exists in the country and the subcontinent more generally, not to mention the disgraceful domination by England, Australia and their allies in the first 80-odd years of the ICC’s existence. Neither of these factors, however, though, nor the brutality of an unleashed Indian capitalism, can justify cricket’s being held to ransom by a small number of nationalist politicians and greedy oligarchs."
In its maniacal desire for global domination, the BCCI has, ironically, been aided by self-serving administrators in Australia and England. At the same time, it has alienated cricketers, cricket lovers, and cricket administrators in the other countries of the subcontinent, as well as in South Africa and the West Indies. The video put out at the end of the last World Test Championship, which portrayed Jay Shah as more important to cricket than the winning South African team, was a creepy manifestation of this. And it should shame all genuine cricket lovers that the great West Indian fast bowlers, Andy Roberts and Michael Holding, have minced no words in calling India’s new cricket imperialism to account.
From its origins in 1909, the ICC has been a den of intrigue and incompetence. Now, corruption and malevolence have been added to the mix. Under English control, it served the internationally-minded cricket lover poorly, and in this regard Indian control has been no better. Ironically, it is not even clear whether the BCCI has served Indian cricket well. It is universally acknowledged that Test cricket is the highest form of the game, yet in three iterations of the World Test Championship, India has never won — despite our hundreds of millions of cricket fans, the lavish adulation and money that our cricketers enjoy, the crores and crores in the BCCI’s coffers, and the financial and reputational investment made in Indian cricket by our oligarchs and politicians. In the first WTC final, India lost to New Zealand, a country whose population is less than that of Surat. In the second WTC final, India lost to Australia, a country with roughly the population of Mumbai. The third time around, India did not even qualify for the final.
India’s global cricketing record is, given its demographic and financial base, rather indifferent. When it comes to global cricket administration, India has, over the past century, gone through several distinct phases: first of abject deference (to White domination), then to a plea for parity, then to acquiring a leading role, and finally to becoming an overbearing hegemon. In terms of political influence, we may be far, far, behind the United States of America, China, and Russia. In terms of economic strength (judged as it must be by per capita income rather than gross domestic product), our current rank is 137th. However, when it comes to the conduct (as well as misconduct) of international cricket, we are not just Vishwa-Guru, but Vishwa-Boss and even Vishwa-Bully.
ramachandraguha@yahoo.in
