Cricket the IPL way – or how to begin to understand the middle classes in India

I met recently in Mumbai a former colleague, and competitor, visiting from the Enterprise Ireland trade promotion organisation in Dublin. We had worked in Sweden at the same time, seeking out opportunities for our countries in the large Swedish and Scandinavian markets. I was able to obtain an extra ticket for him to join my wife and me at the first of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket games in Mumbai, featuring the home favourites The Mumbai Indians and new boys on the block the Kochi Tuskers.

Being unfamiliar with traffic in Mumbai on a Friday night my Dutch- Irish friend just managed to meet up with us on time to squeeze through the police cordons and the crowds and catch the opening overs. He soon realized that this was like nothing else he had seen in India, or probably anywhere. Leaving to one side the novelty for some Irishmen of cricket – “throwing is precisely what the bowler is supposed not to do” I had to explain! – the atmosphere of 35,000 animated, excited spectators at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, overlooking the city”s famed Marine Drive and the Arabian sea must rival any London soccer derby, or even the two Manchesters’ semi final at Wembley.

Cheer-leaders imported from the United States, trumpets blaring, and instant replies after almost every ball made for a wild and exuberant occasion. This was especially so as local boy, national hero and international cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar scored his first ever 100 in the 20/20 format.
The IPL has taken off spectacularly in India: two games a day for about six weeks, each of them televised to audiences in the millions, it must be an advertising agency’s idea of paradise. Although the cricket World Cup has only just finished, with of course a triumphant India – “The World is at Our Feet” exclaimed the Times newspaper the morning after! – most of the IPL games are already achieving full houses across the country.

Two points struck me as I watched the Mumbai Indians somehow lose their first home game. First, and this was brought home clearly with my friend in tow, the British (and other cricketing nations) have an inbuilt and valuable cultural advantage over our European, not to mention American, competitors in India:  we know that the bowler doesn’t throw the ball, that there are six balls in an over, and that a slip is a fielding position not an item of woman’s apparel.  Of course business is business, but as most Indians still like to do their business with a degree of informality and value commonalities, the passion for cricket is something we are foolish to ignore.

Second,  it struck me  on leaving the ground with the thousands of other well-satisfied spectators that the IPL is a wonderful illustration of the much talked –about growing middle classes in India. To see and feel middle class India buy a ticket for an IPL game, or watch one on television with its cocoon of advertisements for air conditioners, mobiles, and scooters surrounding almost every ball, is a potent demonstration of the newly acquired and rapidly growing buying power, aspirations and confidence of this slice of India’s population.   There are plenty of fascinating books about the phenomena of the new middle class in India – of which “We are Like That Only”   by marketing analyst Rama Bijapurkar   must be among the best, and is recommended to all new arrivals in Mumbai by the British Business Group’s savvy Chair Roger Pereira – but a study of an IPL game is a great substitute.

Although an infrequent visitor to Mumbai I think my Irish friend got the point clearly enough about the IPL’s appeal; and an amused spectator in front of us – who just happened to be a relative of Sachin Tendulkar – joked as we left that he had, almost, become a cricket expert!