Gaining the upper hand

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi planted the first seeds of belief in Indian cricket, Sunil Gavaskar equipped it with professionalism and self-respect, Kapil Dev gave it teeth and muscle, Sachin Tendulkar added the halo and Sourav Ganguly armed it with nerve and rough-edged passion. While we owe these magnificent men a handsome salute, the script for India's rise as a cricketing behemoth wasn't written under the glorious sunshine on a cricket field, but within the confines of two rooms in London and New Delhi in the space of a few months in 1993.

India's ascendancy can arguably be traced to that momentous World Cup in 1983. Not only did India win it, but so incensed was NKP Salve, the then president of the Indian cricket board, at the refusal by the MCC to grant two extra passes for the final that he vowed to bring the tournament home. But it was not until 1993 that the dynamics that would catapult India towards their superpower status were set in motion.

Having demonstrated its capacity to host a World Cup successfully in 1987, India would have been content to let the 1996 edition return to England if it hadn't been for Pakistan's goading for another bid. Pakistan went it alone first, but sought India's co-operation after its original submission secured only four votes against South Africa's 16 and England's 15. Sri Lanka was drafted in as an equal partner and the campaign climaxed in a 13-hour meeting so acrimonious that the ICC came to the verge of collapse. After a liberal exchange of threats of vetoes and boycotts, the joint bid, a couple of million pounds higher than England's, was approved with stout support from the associate members. It was a seminal victory for the subcontinent and Jagmohan Dalmiya, who had spearheaded the campaign.

But while one battle been won on foreign soil, another loomed at home. The 1987 World Cup had been an organisational success but a commercial failure - the Indian board lost US$40,000. Corporate sponsorship was still a nascent phenomenon and (would you believe it?) Doordarshan, the state-owned television monopoly, actually deemed the live telecast of cricket a celestial favour to the board. Enough was truly enough when, overcome either by greed or stupidity - perhaps both - it demanded that the board pay $16,000 for the telecast of each match during the five-nation Hero Cup in November 1993. The Indian board took the matter to court and a division bench for the Supreme Court delivered a historic decision, well past midnight, at the residence of the then chief justice JS Verma, holding that the air waves were not the monopoly of the Indian government. The rights to broadcast Indian cricket were instantly snapped up by Trans World International, for a three-year contract at the rate of $2 million per year. Doordarshan won them back in 1998 but forked out a staggering $52.5 million for five years.

Many of India's ills - poverty, chaos, congestion - can be attributed in varying degrees to its population. But what is a nightmare for town planners and economists has been a godsend for cricket and India's information technology industry. Every year Indian institutes produce thousands of IT professionals, making the country one of the largest software providers in the world. And with 87 million TV homes and over 600 million television viewers, India has more captive consumers of cricket than the rest of the world put together.

If IT has the potential to be India's biggest enabler, cricket has been its great redeemer for years. Hockey is only notionally the national game: India is a one-sport nation and the average cricket junkie would let nothing, not even the poor international record of the team, detract him from the worship of his beloved game. A few idols are enough for a lifetime. A Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Tendulkar provide, apart from thrill and joy, what the nation's leaders have abjectly failed to provide: pride, ambition and nationalistic fervour. CP Surendran, a Mumbai-based poet and writer, summed up the national sentiment when he described Tendulkar's walk to the wicket: "a whole nation, tatters and all, marches with him to the battle-arena. A pauper people pleading for relief, remission from the lifelong anxiety of being Indian ... seeking a moment's liberation from their India-bondage through the exhilarating grace of one accidental bat." Does it still strike you as odd that India, with a lower per-capita income than Swaziland, Surinam and Sri Lanka, should spend millions of hours and even more cash on cricket? Or, for that matter, why India, a poor third-world country, should emerge as cricket's unqualified superpower?

Conservative estimates put the average annual spending by Indian corporates at $217 million, twice as much as the annual budgets of many Indian states. Roughly 70% of this goes into television. Three of the four main sponsors for the 2003 World Cup were multinationals targeting the Indian middle class. Satellite television has rendered geographical locations wholly inconsequential: from Delhi to Durban, Toronto to Trinidad, the money is where the Indian team is. And power is where money is. When the South African board merrily dumped the ICC match referee Mike Denness, who invited India's wrath by his over-the-top penalisation of seven players for excessive-appealing during the second Test at Port Elizabeth in 2001, it was not, as some chose to see it, a division along racial lines, but a telling demonstration of India's growing economic clout.

The buzz these days is about Ganguly's New India. About how it has managed to rid itself of the cobwebs of diffidence and weak ambition. About how it has acquired a swagger and a stomach for combat. It is not so much about the results - though Ganguly is India's most successful captain overseas - as it is about a difference in attitude and approach that makes Indian fans dizzy with hope: it's unlike anything they have experienced before.

Much as you admire Ganguly's role in this process, the transformation wouldn't have come about without an equally radical change from within the system. The appointment of John Wright as coach was a path-breaking departure from the tradition of granting such positions as favours. After a bumpy start, the captain and the coach have struck a perfect partnership. Ganguly brings passion and fire; Wright a culture of discipline and fitness. Both are unflinching in their support of new talent and they have nurtured a new breed of Indian players who are not apologetic about their talent or overly bothered about the reputation of their opposition.

But the transformation isn't limited to the national team. The winds of change are blowing all over, and nowhere is it more noticeable than at the top. Having earned his reputation as international cricket's money man and power broker, Dalmiya, in his latest tenure with the board, has shown a vision and zeal to transform Indian cricket. The appointment of professional trainers, not only for the national team but also at zonal levels, the resumption of A tours, the appointment of talent scouts and a modern cricket academy which serves as a finishing school for the Indian player are all signs of progressive change. The earnings of the Indian board have nearly tripled in the last five years, from about $8 million to $22 million. But the more heartening news for Indian cricket is that there is increasing evidence of this money being spent well.