There is nothing more fascinating for a cricket lover than perhaps seeing two countries outside of the British Commonwealth group causing major upsets at the highest level of the most English of sports — with one of the toppled giants being England itself.
Plenty of history there, not just of the game but the very idea of history woven around British colonialism.
There were delicious ironies and strange coincidences as Afghanistan beat England at the ground formerly known as the Feroz Shah Kotla and the Netherlands upset South Africa right inside the Himalayas at Dharamshala in the 2023 World Cup.
That awesome quote by Caribbean writer C L R James rings true: "What do they know of cricket that only cricket know?"
Plenty of Afghanistan in Delhi
There was a horde of liberal, genteel sporties rueing the fact that when India beat Pakistan in a politically loaded match at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, there was no one in sight in the stands to cheer the Pakistan team. Watchful social media denizens also did not like the losing team being jeered out of the ground in a region known for Pakistan baiting.
But the next day was a different story in Delhi as thousands of Indians cheered Afghanistan beating England, as if this was a real-life Lagaan moment. "Rashid, Rashid, Rashid..." the crowd chanted for the Afghan star, bringing hope to the liberal optimist that Indians are not as religiously bigoted as is often suspected these days.
There is plenty of Afghanistan in Delhi for the discerning eye. Just a couple of miles south of the Arun Jaitley Stadium stands the imposing but half-forgotten Purana Qila, or Old Fort, built by Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan-origin Sultan born in Bihar.
The Shah also built India's first highway in the Grand Trunk Road, which symbolically begins in Kabul and cuts to the land of Eden Gardens, Kolkata, which gave us Rabindranath Tagore who authored Kabuliwala, a Pathan-loaded short story once fancied by many a girl-child as a lasting tale of paternal love.
Delhiwalas are equally kind to Afghan refugees.
Lajpat Nagar has a sizeable portion filled with the smell of freshly baked naan in a colony originally known for Hindu refugees who fled Punjab and Sindh during the bloody Partition riots of 1947. And then, Amitabh Bachchan plays Badshah Khan in Khuda Gawah, an Afghan-themed Hindi movie released in 1992.
The Big B's heroic friendship with a Pathaan character called Sher Khan in Zanjeer (1973) is also part of Bollywood's history.
The Dutch Have Their Own Subcontinental Links, Though Less Visible
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off a resumed ferry ride between Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu and Kankesanthurai in Sri Lanka's north on October 14. The ferry lands only 20 km from Jaffna's Dutch Fort. I have visited Dutch remnants at Galle in the South as well.
As it happens, the Dutch team is filled with cricketers of South African and Indian origin who would remind you of Mahatma Gandhi's Boer War days.
Things do come a full circle in more ways than one. Just one day before the Netherlands upset Africa, the lords of the Olympics voted cricket back into the Games for the Los Angeles event due in 2028.
On the day Modi inaugurated the ferry service, I waved a copy of a lovely novel called Netherland to a club of book lovers, flagging it as an essential World Cup read. Fascinatingly enough, it is written by Irish writer Joseph O'Neill through the eyes of a Dutch investment banker in New York, the protagonist, who bonds with South Asians over cricket in the city better known for Wall Street.
The protagonist has an English wife who has left him. It doesn't get more symbolic than that. The wife is a colonial metaphor for a dominating power and cricket is a stark reminder of the fair play values that cricket stands for. And "Nether" (no surprises) is about the lower citizens from former colonies.
I had my own strange cricket coincidence at the Swedish capital a few years ago when a social media friend took me to watch a Sunday cricket match. I saw Irish scientists from the famed Karolinska Instituet bond with Afghan refugees, runaway errand boys from Pakistan and Indian software engineers, over bat and ball.
To my surprise, I found that the local government even funds cricket games. Evidently, South Asians have kidnapped even Scandinavians to love the game now transcending the Commonwealth's shores.
What do you call that? Stockholm Syndrome?
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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