India Zindabad!

The Indian cricket hype machine was taken out of the garage, sprayed all over with WD-40 and running like a dream for the start of the World Cup in March. Sadly, in spite of newspaper, TV, billboard and shopping centre babble so blanket it could keep you warm through a Delhi December night, nobody was paying much attention for about a month. World Cup yadda yadda whatever England lose to Ireland ha ha ha.

Then India got to the quarter-finals, and drew Australia. Suddenly it was everywhere: I was on an aeroplane that night, the airport apparently empty until you found the bit of the departure lounge with a telly and a thousand people around it. After we took off, the pilot gave us regular score updates: when India won, there was a round of applause, not to mention the odd whoop and holler. World Cup nonsense was finally here.

A few days later, the whole country stopped what it was doing. A semi-final against Pakistan, in Punjab of all places. It briefly crossed my mind that the tone of public discourse around that game was unpleasant, perhaps even belligerent: then I remembered what it was like in England when we played Germany in football semi-finals. And suddenly it all seemed rather restrained.

They say that love of cricket crosses otherwise impermeable Indian class divides: and while that’s true, it doesn’t mean the divides aren’t still preserved. In a hookah lounge in Bangalore, a rowdy crowd of middle-class youngsters sat at tables playing Pakistan-wicket-drinking games; outside, the autorickshaw-wallahs and labourers stared in at the big screen.

After victory in the final against Sri Lanka, Mumbai was as fun as I’ve ever seen it: every motorbike speeding past at midnight seemed to have at least five people on, waving Indian flags and screaming ‘Indiaaaaaaaa’ or just ‘wwrraaaaaaaaiiiiiihhhh’. It had turned out, to everyone’s slight surprise, that the hype was entirely justified.

Less than a week after the final, the Indian Premier League began, and what was hyperama last year met with general indifference this time around. Refreshingly, everyone in India’s put their feet up and can’t be bothered with any more cricket for the time being. It’s reminiscent of Franck Lebouef on They Think It’s All Over, not long after he fluked his way into the French team for the 1998 World Cup Final. He didn’t know any of the quiz answers, but just shrugged a big bald crap centre-half Gallic shrug, saying “I doen’t cairre. I won ze World Cup.”