Cheerleaders shame Indian cricket

The IPL's reliance on foreign cheerleaders reinforces unsavoury Indian stereotypes about sex and women, writes Kanishk Tharoor in the Guardian.

I'm not offended by cheerleading, more bored by it. In any grown-up context, it offers a dispiriting definition of both leadership and cheer. Many cricket fans, including myself, would be happy to see the (metaphorical) back of these cheerleaders. Their twists and pumps add nothing to what is, in truth, a wonderful sporting spectacle. They are a reminder of the ocean of inanities that commercial modernity promises our lives, drowning all occasions in froth. First the fall from grace, then the flood.