Abstract
Cricket’s imperial lineage continues to define its meaning in parts of the erstwhile British Empire. Simultaneously, the game is now a metaphor for the forces of globalization and a vehicle for asserting new post-colonial identities. The creation of the lucrative Indian Premier League and India’s rise as the financial epicentre of the game is reflective of its rise as an emerging engine of the new global financial structure and as a major market for the consumer economy. India’s rise as a new “cricket capital” is intrinsically linked to the forces of global capitalism and this has significantly changed the game power structure itself. This essay analyses the discourse around the Indian Premier League, debates around cricket’s new ‘Asian bloc’ and the racism row between the Indian and Australian cricket teams in January 2008, to delineate the shift in the international power dynamics of cricket and its implications for debates about post-colonialism and globalization.
Bombay Sport Exchange: cricket, globalization and the future
By Nalin Mehta
Nalin Mehta
Nalin Mehta is Managing Editor, Moneycontrol, Chief AI Officer - Editorial Operations, Network18 and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is an award-winning Indian journalist, political scientist and author who has held senior leadership positions in major media companies and educational institutions; served as an international civil servant with the UN and the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland; taught and held research positions at universities and institutions in Australia (La Trobe University, ANU), Singapore (NUS), Switzerland (International Olympic Museum) and India (Shiv Nadar University, IIM Bangalore). Most recently, he has been Dean and Professor at School of Modern Media, UPES University. He has previously been Group Consulting Editor, Network18; Executive Editor, The Times of India-Online, Managing Editor, India Today (TV channel) and Consulting Editor, The Times of India. Mehta is the author of several best-selling and critically acclaimed books, including The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party (hailed as a ‘seminal’ work, No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller lists for 26 consecutive weeks in 2022, and republished worldwide in several languages); India’s Techade: Digital Revolution and Change in the World’s Largest Democracy, India on Television (Asian Publishing Award for Best Book on Asian Media, 2009), Behind a Billion Screens (Longlisted as Business Book of the Year, Tata Literature Live, 2015) and Dreams of a Billion (2022 Ekamra Sports Book of the Year Award, co-authored). His edited books include Gujarat Beyond Gandhi (co-editor), Television in India and The Changing Face of Cricket (co-editor). Mehta is a DFID-Commonwealth scholar with a Ph.D in Political Science from Trobe University, Melbourne; M.A. International Relations from University of East Anglia, UK; and B.A. Journalism (Honours) from University of Delhi.
