The cricket World Cup in India in 2023 will be more than just a game

FOREIGNERS THINK of Manmohan Singh’s reformist budget of 1991 as the moment India reconnected to the global economy. Many Indians are likelier to recall a cricket tournament that took place in the subcontinent four years earlier.

It was the first World Cup outside England and the crowds were vast and euphoric. Thanks in part to the contest’s first title sponsor—a textiles firm called Reliance Industries—participating teams were paid an amazing £75,000 (then $127,000).

Cricket’s biggest international contest (in which the games last one day) has been back to the subcontinent twice since 1987, each time revealing how India’s new confidence and wealth is transforming both the country and its favourite game. In October 2023 the World Cup will return to India for the first time in 12 years. It will be the richest, glitziest and—six months before a general election—most politicised cricket extravaganza ever.

India’s vast cricket audience of 210m television households—90m more than in 2011—has become one of the great media prizes. Just the online streaming rights to India’s biggest domestic tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL), cost Reliance (now a $208bn oil-to-retail behemoth) $2.6bn. For foreign cricketers, the World Cup is an opportunity to audition for a life-changing IPL contract.

For Narendra Modi, it will be a chance to press his claim for a third term. Indian politicians have always fed off cricket’s popularity. But the prime minister and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have taken this to new levels. The country’s biggest cricket stadium, which holds 132,000 people, is named after him and he misses no opportunity to praise (or solicit praise from) the country’s star cricketers. “A very happy birthday to the man who has redefined the meaning of being an Indian for every Indian,” grovelled Gautam Gambhir, a recently retired cricketer, now a BJP politician, on Twitter.

The game’s absorption into India’s political economy has costs. The investments made by Reliance and other Indian firms are giving them increasing control over how and where it is played globally.

Most Indian fans prefer the action-packed short format of the game used in the IPL—a two-hour slugfest known as T20. One-day cricket and the cherished five-day Test matches are therefore retreating before the juggernaut of Indian-backed, franchise-based T20 tournaments. Two more, the UAE T20 League and the South Africa T20 League, will launch (with Indian-owned teams) in 2023. Breathless marketing of the 2023 World Cup will not allay many cricket lovers’ dread over these developments.■