Cheers to Cricket

The Australian letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australian bureau. To register to receive it by email. This week’s issue is written by Vivek Shankar, editor of The Times.

A stadium full of thousands of noisy fans. The atmosphere electric. Hundreds of millions more glued to televisions. Two teams – Australia and India – are at the top of their game.

It might as well have been last Sunday’s World Cup final in Ahmedabad, India, but this copy was at the Sydney Cricket Ground almost eight years ago. The supporters of both teams turned out in overwhelming numbers.

At a crucial moment during the second half of the match, a voice rang out in part of the stadium: “Aussie! Australian! Australian!” The local fans responded dutifully: “Oi! Oei! Oei!”

The same voice then led another shout – in Hindi. “Triumphal! Triumphant! India will prevail!”

My wife and I had just moved to Sydney after a long stint in San Francisco. I was excited to live again in a cricket-loving country and introduce my better half, an American, to the captivating joys of the game, both in a stadium and on TV.

Growing up in India, cricket was all around me. I never had any special skills in the sport, nor was I an avid student of the game, but I played every chance I got, like so many other kids. So I didn’t miss cricket much when I moved to the United States in my twenties. Yes, I would hunker down in front of a computer screen for hours watching a single match, but I was not a dedicated follower of the game, even as streaming technology made it easier and easier to follow the action.

The landing in Australia changed that. It seemed like there was always some form of cricket being broadcast, children played it in parks and on beaches, and it was possible to watch the professionals in some of the sport’s most iconic locations.

I started playing again, in one recreational competition, with Sydney’s majestic beaches providing the perfect balm for aching limbs no longer accustomed to the rigors of the game. But there was nothing like cheering on India in what was now, in a sense, my home stadium, the Sydney Cricket Ground.

One such moment was the night the fan led the cheers for both India and Australia. I suspected that he, like me, was an Indian immigrant to Australia, and had fallen in love with his new home. But his support for the Australian team – a famously ruthless team – was wrong.

Looking back, that should be the case.

Over the decades, cricketers of South Asian descent have played for the West Indies, England, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. There have been other cases of cross-pollination, with West Indian heritage being represented in the England team, for example.

CLR JamesIn his groundbreaking book ‘Beyond a Boundary’ he examined how cricket, a game popularized by British colonists, played a role in breaking down barriers such as class and race. That night at the SCG I may have had to cross the line of identity.

By the time Sunday evening arrived in Seoul, where my wife and I now live, the nearly seven-week World Cup had yielded a new cricket fan: our five-year-old son. He was born in Australia, and that is where his cricketing allegiances lie.

When India’s loss became official, it wasn’t all heartbreak in our apartment. The Australian supporter, who had fallen asleep during India’s innings, had just woken up to see Glenn Maxwell, one of his favorite players, scoring the winning runs. It was the stuff of dreams.

Now this week’s stories:

Around the times

• Hall sues Oates. About what a mystery is. The duo, whose songs regularly topped the charts, are embroiled in a legal dispute, but a judge in Tennessee has sealed the case file.

• How electricity is changing, country by country. Renewable electricity is increasing rapidly, but the world’s energy mix remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels for the time being.

• 100 Notable Books of 2023. Every year we study thousands of new books, looking for the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the highlights, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

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