Cricket is life in this country. It’s the same as football in Brazil or rugby in New Zealand. The health of a nation’s economy, the overall happiness of an entire people, rests on the shoulders of a few overpaid athletes.
We Australians like to think of ourselves as a sports-mad bunch but we’re really not. We just like sport. We’re not obsessed. The “race that stops a nation” barely even stops you getting the next round of drinks in.
But cricket in India causes a huge, huge country to pause whatever it is doing to swivel its collective head towards the nearest TV while some of the biggest celebrities on the planet bowl leather and swing willow and attempt to do more than 1.3 billion people proud.
Oddly enough, it’s taken Australians a while to appreciate the cultural significance of sport in other countries, particularly when it comes to the travel experience. We might be pretty into the footy back…