You could be forgiven for thinking Donald Trump is over-litigious, but back in January 1598, in Guildford (England) to be precise, a dispute arose over a plot of land and flared up so ferociously that it rapidly made its way into Court: the big issue was whether a stretch of meadow was common land, or did it belong to the plaintiff? The defendants called a fifty-nine-year-old fellow, John Derrick, to give evidence in their favour, and Derrick was a “scholar” (he’d been to school), so he knew what he was talking about. He told the Court, and I’m quoting here (the spellcheck hasn’t gone crazy), that “in the ffree schoole of Guldeford hee and diverse of his fellows did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies”. So it was common land after all (children frolicked there since Derrick was a boy), and the plaintiff lost his case…but the outcome of the litigation has long since ceased to matter (they’re probably building flats on the meadow as I write): no, what matters is that John Derrick’s reference to “creckett”, or cricket as we call it today, is the first recorded mention of the game in the English language (or any other language come to that).
Two hundred years after the redoubtable Derrick shuffled off his mortal coil, the single-wicket version of the game was a popular hotbed for gambling and all-round dissolution, attracting huge crowds to the Artillery Ground in Finsbury. Within fifty years, bowlers were pitching the ball to the batsman rather than rolling it underarm to the crease (Trevor Chappell might take note). The MCC was established in 1787, and those blue-coated thugs of the East India Company duly exported the game to India well before the century was out. Indeed, the British Empire went on to embed the thud of willow on leather worldwide, including the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and, of course (see above), all four corners of the Subcontinent.
Like so much else, though, Indian innovation and ingenuity have gone on to teach the former Mother Country a thing or two about meaningful progress: specifically, following the creation of the Indian Premier League in 2008, it has introduced the most popular and lucrative domestic cricket league in the world. Indian enterprise has transformed cricket into a year-round spectacular, with the best players joining. And 90% of the Billion cricket fans worldwide are currently resident in India, so it’s no surprise either that the IPL has proved so lucrative, drawing in revenues of $140 Million last year, with a brand value (Donald Trump take note here) of $11 Billion (www.bcci).
Disruptive Innovation
That’s what I want to draw attention to: it’s not just about the success of the IPL enterprise, but, rather, how that enterprise came about: a paradigm of the Subcontinent’s ability to position itself at the cutting edge of economic development, through a process of disruptive innovation: drawing in turn on the vast potential of what is now the largest demographic on the planet: increasingly wealthy, ever hungry for better products and services, and more aspirational than ever before.
Those same externalities have transformed India into a global technology hub, a centre for service support excellence. So much more besides the fifth biggest economy on the planet (www.rajneetpg2022.com), bigger by far than Britain, and set fair to rise still further up the GDP league table over the years ahead.
So, it’s not just cricket…it’s about a whole new way of doing things, and when it comes to that, India is leading the world.
The Empire gave India Cricket, but now India’s giving it back…with a vengeance, and that tells us a lot about where the Subcontinent is going next
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