It was 9.30pm at Edgbaston and the presentation had just ended after a thrilling Champions Trophy final. The Indians had completed their victory lap and were gradually making it back to the confines of the dressing room. Outside, however, the party was just about to begin. As I walked out of the media gate, E3, to get to the car park and start the drive to Oxford, I was confronted by a sea of blue. It was simply an Indian takeover of Edgbaston. There was a human chain with close to 1,000 people and each of them was singing “Hum Honge Kaamyaab”.
In front of the main entrance to the stadium, there were hundreds of Indian fans dancing to the tune of Chak De! India. Men and women who did not even know each other were hugging in sheer delight. As I managed to navigate my way to the car park, I could not but help think back to Mohali and the India-Pakistan semi-final in the 2011 World Cup. Birmingham and Mohali have very similar roundabouts and intersections, and just like in Mohali in March 2011, at Edgbaston on Sunday, June 23, 2013, every roundabout had been taken over by jubilant Indian fans dancing to the tune of drums and other music.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time that such a thing had happened. I remember seeing similar crowd passion at the home of English cricket, Lord’s, in 2009. India were playing England in the second edition of the World T20 on June 14, 2009. Lord’s was awash in a sea of light blue. It did not stop there. Just as Paul Collingwood’s side came out for a pre-match warm-up at the Nursery Ground just behind the media centre, they were booed and jeered by a section of the crowd. England, the home team, booed at the home of cricket. The home advantage had been surrendered and the significance of the act was not lost on the English captain, who mentioned at the post-match conference that his side was hurt by such crowd behaviour.
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The very same crowd reaction was repeated at Edgbaston. As the names of the two sides were announced over the loudspeaker, MS Dhoni’s name evoked the loudest cheer and Alistair Cook’s a series of boos.
Does this support really matter to the players? Indeed, it does. Ishant Sharma openly thanked the crowd for standing by him when he bowled that fascinating 18th over in the final against England. Most other players felt the same and some have even suggested that it helped a great deal at crucial moments in the final.
As we look ahead to the Champions Trophy, with India starting their campaign tomorrow against Bangladesh, the issue of crowd support will continue to be at the centre of intense media scrutiny. This is because patterns of crowd behaviour answer a lot of crucial questions on issues of identity, multiculturalism and pluralism. While these issues appear far removed from the sport itself, passionate support for India has ensured that they are at the core of public discourse and will continue to be so going forward.
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