“Cricket is our religion and Sachin Tendulkar is our God”. This phrase has been used for decades when describing the passion of cricket fans in India. The sport has always united this country when so much else has tried to open the cracks in its community and amongst its people. I have been fortunate enough to be in India this week during the World Cup to experience the “Fever”, “Chaos” and “Unrivalled Passion” in the ground.

The Fever

For those not familiar with how much influence this sport has on the country, literally every advert, TV channel, billboard, bank, bowling alley, restaurants/bars has cricket at the centre of its products and services. Honestly you are almost force fed cricket through your nose! For a geek like me it was heaven. The only comparison on par with this could be with Brazil and the football world cup, but the numbers associated with India and cricket are truly mindboggling. Global audiences attracting almost a billion viewers for cricket matches, boasting one of the most valuable franchise tournaments in the IPL who obtained $6bn worth broadcasting rights, averaging $13M per match which is more than the EPL, MLB and the NBA. We saw these vast numbers at play in the India vs Pakistan match yesterday which set a new global record for online streaming of 35 million people concurrently watching the game, with other metrics still coming through.

The Chaos

The experience for the fans is the most important thing in how successful any sporting event will be. This is one area i feel this World Cup has so far fallen short. The farcical scenes where tickets were only made available to the general public barely 40 days before the start of the world cup is just unacceptable. This has a huge impact on the crowds for non India games, with large stadiums such as Ahmedabad looking empty.

I was lucky enough to get tickets to the India vs Afghanistan game in New Delhi and was super pumped to go to a World Cup game in India for the first time. Traffic was packed many kilometres before the stadium and we had to trek our way to our stadium gate. I enjoyed this as the walk with all the fans, the chanting, flags etc creates a great atmosphere . The security and restrictions for the match was water tight. Spectators are not allowed, water, car keys, cameras, bags etc and have to hand that all into a locker. The ticket only provided access to your gate, so you couldn’t walk around other turnstiles or have access to other food stalls. This for me seemed extremely restrictive and overall not a great fan experience, with just 1 drinks stall and pre made food boxes on offer. The most irritating element to all this was that the tickets did not have a seat number which meant first come first serve and that meant a number of skirmishes and people trying to hold seats for each other. My final observation was of course the demographic of the crowd, which I would estimate to be at least 90% men. Something which authorities in India need to look at to improve female and children attendance at cricket grounds and no better way to do that than starting with the World Cup.

The Unrivalled Passion

Even though the fan experience wasn’t perfect, the atmosphere and passion in the stadium most definitely made up for it. Having attended cricket matches since the early 2000s, this was my first world cup game in India. It was a hot summers day in October(!!), and the ground was about 80% full by the first ball, but within an hour it was packed to the rafters! The deafening cheer at each Afghani wicket, the urge to capture a glimpse of their heroes Virat, Rohit and Bumrah was amazing to experience first hand. Two moments really stood out for me during this match.

Firstly the cheer from the crowd when Virat Kohli came out to bat. I could write a whole blog on his cricketing achievements but, with a social media following of approx 400M followers, and an estimated net worth of more than $110M, this man truly is the new God of cricket and a global sporting superstar. Delhi is his home ground and they crows wanted to know he is truly one of their own.

The second moment, which gave me goosebumps was during the 2nd innings drinks break where more than 40K people are singing Vande Mataram (I praise you motherland) in unison. This song/peon has huge significance for India and had a huge role to play in the independence movement before 1947. In 1950 The Constituent Assembly of India adopted it as the republic’s national song and has equal significance to the national anthem. This moment was really spine tingling stuff and you could just sense the pride, patriotic spirit and passion of everyone in the stadium. Everyone in the stadium was united in their love for their team, no one cared about their differences in religion, gender, age, caste etc, and this was so good to see in our world today.

Its still very clear that this is still the World Cup that every team seeks, and as the tournament approaches the business end and we get more close matches and upsets like the one we have seen today with Afghanistan and England, I think the interest will only increase. However the thought in the back of my mind is, “Will this be the last time we see a 50 over world cup in this part of the world?”.