Young India Loves Cricket, Plays Stocks – How They Clashed on 8-9 March!

Cricket and equities are two “cults” that have grown explosively over the last 20 years, powered by the same phenomenon — India’s aggressive youth bulge.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

Eighty-seven thousand (87,000) people in the blue-packed Narendra Modi Stadium! Seven hundred and fifty (750) million concurrent online viewers! All erupted in uncontrollable triumph when Jacob Duffy was caught off Abhishek Sharma. Digital viewership had hit a peak concurrent count of 68 million during the match, considered a global streaming record for any live sporting event. New Zealand was crushed by 96 runs, India’s first victory over the Kiwis in any T-20 World Cup encounter. Earlier, India had posted 255-5, the highest total in any final. India was the first country to win successive crowns in the championship; and the first host to lift the cup. A 10-second ad slot cost Rs 50 lakhs, or $ 55,000. Premium tickets sold for Rs 12 lakhs, or $ 15,000.  These records and encomiums were breathtaking. Crackers boomed and people danced in the streets all through that Sunday night, perhaps through to breakfast.

Sharp at 9.15 am on Monday, the stock markets opened to a brutal rout. Hostilities in the Middle East had violently escalated through the weekend. Prognosis of a quick capitulation by Iran stood smashed. The beleaguered country had dug in, weathering lethal American/Israeli bombs, but hitting back, spraying drones and ballistic missiles all over the region. Korean markets opened with a ten percent crash. Oil leapt to $ 115 per barrel. The rupee skid past 92/dollar. Indian markets were pummeled by nearly two percent, wiping out over Rs 9 lakh cr, or $ 100 bn, in investor’s wealth.

Young Indians, who are huge cricket fans, who had been euphoric just a few hours ago, sobered up quickly. Why? Because these very young Indians had powered India’s phenomenal, surging equity cult. They had won big on Sunday night. But they had lost prodigiously on Monday morning.

Anecdotally, it was the mother of cricket victories, but it seemed to have the briefest of ecstatic celebrations.  

Do Cricket Matches and Stock Markets Tango?

By now my curiosity had been tickled pink. Is there a correlation between cricket and stock market outcomes? Surprisingly, yes!

I first turned to India’s totally unexpected, outlier victory in the 1983 World Cup. Completely against the run of play, we had beaten the West Indies. Alas, the Sensex had not been launched at that time (fun fact — Sensex appeared in 1986, and Nifty 50 in 1996), so no data was available. 

But in the 2007 T-20 World Cup, we shellacked Pakistan; the next day Sensex had a trifling up-move by 0.32 percent. How ungrateful!

In 2011, when we hammered Sri Lanka to take the ODI World Cup, the Sensex gave a salaami (salute) of nearly 1.5 percent. That felt nice. But again, in 2024, when we got the better of South Africa, the Sensex rose 0.56 percent, not bad but not resounding either.

Believe it or not, but there have been several global behavioural studies linking sports victories and defeats to the ups and downs of stock markets. The first seminal work was done by Vinod Mishra and Russell Smyth on a decade of India’s ODI games from 1995-2005. It detected a clearly “asymmetric” equation between cricket results and market returns.

If India lost, the markets fell the next day; but if India won, there wasn’t much of a ripple. 

That asymmetry showed that pessimism and moroseness created by a defeat fed through to investors’ negative actions in the market. But a victory was taken in stride, without triggering an exaggerated, bullish action. Another statistical study in 2019 for the 2006-2017 period confirmed the asymmetric bias of the first study, ie that losses created stronger effects than wins. 

The Hyper-Asymmetry of India-Pakistan Clashes

Here I must segue towards a delicious collateral fact. The “asymmetry” got exacerbated after high-decibel, hugely emotional India-Pakistan encounters. An Indian defeat invariably led to a higher negative impact on our markets versus a similar cop-out against any other country. And there was a “Sachin effect”, ie if India lost riding on a Sachin failure, the markets fell even more than usual. I guess the country saw that as the fall of an icon, depressing an already dark mood.

But Pakistan has a perverse upshot. Whenever Pakistan wins, their markets go up; but Pakistan losses are just shrugged off by their markets, without a discernible effect. Why? I reckon this can be explained by the “theory of expectations”. Pakistan fans expect their team to lose, so behave stoically. But if they score an unexpected win, they react with impulsive elation. How delicious!  

What’s even more nutritious is the fact that Pakistan is alone in this “expected losers” cohort. For example, when Germany loses football matches, their stock market declines. World cup losses across countries activate a sell-off. But Pakistan? No sir, a loss is so seared into their DNA that the country barely responds to it. 

You Wanna Bet on Blue Jersey Investors?

What do the stars foretell? Will India’s cricket/market tango strengthen or weaken over the next few decades? I would bet on “strengthen”. Why? Because cricket and equities are two “cults” that have grown explosively over the last 20 years, powered by the same phenomenon — India’s aggressive youth bulge. Just take a quick peek at key data points. 

Demat trading accounts crossed 200 million in 2025, up 5x in five years! Remarkably, this is almost equal to the total number of households in India. Nearly 140 million investors were active, up 4x since 2019. Over half the new investors on NSE in 2025 were under 30 years old. Half the mutual fund folios are now held by investors under 30, many from semi-urban and tier 2/3 cities. Retail holdings have jumped by 5x after the pandemic, vaulting over Rs 1 lakh cr, or Rs 1 trillion; a bulk is held in young hands.    

At 32, India has the youngest average age for equity investors. China is higher at 38. America is almost geriatric at about 45!

You wanna bet that more than four out of five blue jerseys at Narendra Modi Stadium on 8 March 2026, had taken a punt or two on a stock in the previous week? If yes, I will give you excellent odds!