In India, Even Cricket Is No Longer Cricket

Since its inauguration in 2008, the Indian Premier League, India’s biggest sporting and television spectacle, has often been on the front rather than the sports page of Indian newspapers. “Rich, fast and powerful,” this abbreviated version of the British sport of cricket became “for many an image of the new India,” as James Astill writes in “The Great Tamasha: Cricket, Corruption, and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India.” Intoxicating the country’s emerging middle class, it “also drew in a powerful horde of investors and chancers -- film stars, politicians and billionaire tycoons.” Today, mismanaged finances, precariously leveraged corporate owners, players in cahoots with illegal gamblers and vulgarity in general characterize this upstart challenge to traditional cricket.