More to it than just cricket

Too often, the glittering prizes associated with cricket are used as an emotional proxy for Indian aspirations for global economic stature. The game is a symbol of new wealth, but also of enduring and widening inequalities. The special quality of cricket in south Asia is not, in the end, its function as a money-spinner but its role in popular culture, its street-level vibrancy. It may sound obvious but it needs to be reiterated that cricket was not invented in order to serve as a bandwagon for businessmen, politicians or military dictators. The game lives because it raises the universal joy of harmless play to a high level of technique and drama, because it displays so effectively the ever-surprising capacity and diversity of the human race.