Date-stamped : 30 Dec93 - 17:05
INDIAN SPORTS FANATICS PAY WORSHIP TO THE `CULT OF CRICKET'
By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post Foreign Service

CALCUTTA - It started as an ordinary cricket match,  but  as  the
hours  drifted  by, it evolved into a uniquely Indian affair that
showed why Calcutta's Eden Gardens is considered one of the great
cricket stadiums and home to the world's most passionate fans.
First came the Wave - 120,000 Indians leaping  to   their   feet,
raising   their   arms   to  the  heavens and shouting in unison.
Then came the showers of firecrackers, bottle rockets  and flares
in  the   stands  and on the field in the middle of the game - or
more precisely, throughout  the  entire   game.   Finally,   when
India  thrashed  the  West  Indies by 102 runs last month to cap-
ture its first major international cricket tournament  at   home,
tens   of  thousands  of  euphoric spectators - chanting "In-dya!
In-dya!" - rolled up newspapers, set them ablaze  and  held  them
torchlike  above   their heads.  Sheets of fire floated about the
stadium and orange flames flickered in the stands like embers  in
a  massive Weber grill.
"You will not find a crowd like this anywhere   in   the   world.
They're  really  fanatic,"  West Indies Captain Richie Richardson
said after the match, which culminated the 13-game,  five-country
Hero  Cup tournament.  "Indians worship cricket, and their crick-
eters are like gods to them."
"The cult of cricket and Eden Gardens  go  hand-in-glove,"   said
Krish  Mackerthuj, president of the United Cricket Board of South
Africa, which lost to India in the semifinals.
"If you had a stadium for 200,000 or 500,000, for  a  match  like
this, it would be full, and that wouldn't happen anywhere else in
the world," he said. "And all the burning paper at the end - it's
shocking,  and at first you're a bit harsh, but later you realize
people have different ways of sending the message they're   happy
their team won."
For many Indians, cricket is the finest legacy  of  the   British
Raj.  In  recent  years,  the game has supplanted field hockey as
India's national pastime. On weekends, parks and vacant lots  are
crammed  with  cricket  matches. City alleys from Bombay to Delhi
teem with children playing cricket between the passing cars   and
motorbikes.  In rural villages, boys pound stakes into the middle
of fields or commandeer dusty roads and transform them  into  in-
stant cricket grounds.
The sport, one of the few India competes in  at   a   world-class
level,  has become an intense source of national pride and a ral-
lying point for the country, which comes to a virtual  standstill
on big game days. Matches with Pakistan - most of which have been
canceled in recent years for security reasons - are  a  sort   of
surrogate  for  the  war  no  one wants, similar to the way U.S.-
Soviet basketball games were perceived as  tests  of   superpower
prowess.
A game between Pakistan and India in England  three  months   ago
was  stopped because of fighting between the fans, and the Pakis-
tan team dropped out of the Hero Cup when Bal Thackeray, head  of
India's  right-wing Shiv Sena party, said Pakistani players would
not be allowed on Indian soil. The events have called into  ques-
tion  whether  the 1996 World Cup, scheduled to be hosted jointly
by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, can  be held  on  the   subcon-
tinent.
India's cricket madness began in the  early   1800s,   when   the
country's British rulers needed cricket teams to play against and
suited-up Indian squads, according  to  Narrottam  Puri, one   of
India's  top  sports authorities and cricket commentators. Indian
traders were the first to play the game because  it  helped  them
develop   British  business contacts.  "Once they were seen play-
ing with the rulers, their whole stock in   society   rose   up,"
Puri said, and gradually the sport became a sort of social equal-
izer.
"The maharajahs started to play because it gave  them  an  oppor-
tunity  to rub shoulders with the British, and then the commoners
began playing so they could rub shoulders with  the  maharajahs,"
Puri  said.  And  with what are called "test matches" that last 5
days, "the pace suited the lifestyle in India.  This  is  a  very
leisurely country."
Sociologist Ashis Nandy, who has written a   book   on   cricket,
said,  "It's  an  Indian  game that was mistakenly brought by the
British."
"It's an unpredictable game where the variables  are   so   many,
where  there  are  negotiations with fate, and we are playing not
with an opponent, but with our own destiny. That clicks with  the
Indian  self-conscience,  the  South  Asian  way of looking at he
world and our own fate."
Many others have an equally expansive view of  the  game,   find-
ing  that it holds the keys for proper living, fair play and gen-
tlemanly behavior.
"When someone says, `It's not cricket,' that  means  you're   not
playing  fairly  and  properly  and according to the rules," said
South Africa's Mackerthuj. "Cricket is a way of life itself,  and
the rules have a total effect both on and off the field."
The final game of the Hero  Cup  was   what   cricketers   fondly
refer  to  as  a pajama match: a one-day game, played at night in
colored uniforms. A new $1.5  million  lighting  system  was  in-
stalled  at  Eden Gardens for the tournament, which was organized
to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cricket Association   of
Bengal.
The  entire  stadium  rocked  with   a    bleachers    mentality.
Thousands of orange, white and green Indian flags filled the air.
Every decent hit or defensive play by India  was  an excuse   for
another  pyrotechnic outburst, as firecrackers - many the size of
small pieces of dynamite - were lobbed onto the  field  and  into
the  stands. One West Indies player had to leave the game after a
spark flew into his eye.
Some cricketers complain that it is not  just  the   enthusiastic
fans   that   give   India   a   distinct   home-field advantage.
After suffering a humiliating defeat against India  earlier  this
year,  the   English   team  blamed  bad  shrimp  in  Madras  and
unhealthy smog in Calcutta. Indians may laugh at the  "prawn  de-
fense,"   but   the  smog  was so bad during the West Indies game
that it was difficult to see the electronic scoreboard  from  the
opposite  side  of  the stadium.
But the post-game analysis is pretty  simple.   After   all   the
wickets,  the  spins,  the  overs,  the googlies, the tea breaks,
maidens and donkey  drops,  India  batted  better, India   bowled
better, so India won. For purists, the final score was India, 225
for 7, and the West Indians, 123 - all out. For everybody   else,
it really doesn't matter. It's how they played the game.

(Thanks: Indian News Network, Apurva Desai on r.s.c.)