Let146;s bend it like the US

In 1971, when India beat England in England, we were in college. In our youthful exuberance, we put up a notice in the English department, s...

In 1971, when India beat England in England, we were in college. In our youthful exuberance, we put up a notice in the English department, stating that the English department was going to be indefinitely closed. We then headed for our own department, the Economics one, and expressed our desirefor a holiday. The professor was a noted academic with strong leftist credentials. We were severely castigated for celebrating an imperialist game and given a long lecture on the evils of imperialism. With tails between our legs, we slunk away. That cricket is imperialist is a cliche. That it is a silly game played by flannelled fools is also established.

Try explaining cricket to someone who doesn8217;t know it. I once spent a month in Mongolia and had a Mongolian driver to drive me around. He didn8217;t speak English. Our conversation was in Russian. His fluent, mine strained. He asked me about popular sports in India, having told me that wrestling and archery were Mongolia8217;s favourites. I came up with hockey, football and cricket. Hockey and football were fine. He knew what they were. What was cricket? I tried the impossible. The end result was that he was thoroughly bewildered. For the rest of my sojourn, he would greet me every morning with a chuckle, 8216;8216;Those who are out, come in. Those who are in, come out. Why doesn8217;t everyone play? Why do nine players do nothing?8217;8217;

The case for switching to football rests. We should bid for hosting the
football World Cup, not the Olympics, as the sports minister wants

If you have read Grimble8217;s A Pattern of Islands, you will know how difficult it is to explain cricket to the uninitiated. Why do we play cricket? It can8217;t be the argument that we want to obtain high rankings in a sport few countries dabble in. That logic should lead us to carom or kabbadi. We have done our best to undo the colonial legacy by renaming Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. Why retain cricket? As every economic historian knows, all India8217;s economic problems are because of the British.

Five years ago, there was a remarkably well-researched paper. Using crosscountry data, it tried to correlate the GDP of various countries with whether they played cricket or baseball. The findings should not surprise you. Countries that played baseball consistently outperformed countries that played cricket. This is a paper that deserved wider publicity. Arguably, we would have got similar results had we tried to correlate GDP with whether people drive on the left hand side of the road or the right.

Actually, driving on the left side is also a historical anomaly. Given that most people are right-handed, it goes back to knights riding on horses, lance at the ready, to tackle other knights coming from the opposite direction. To do this, you had to ride on the left side of the road. Hence the policy conclusions are obvious. To boost GDP growth, two conditions are enough. First, switch away from cricket. Second, switch from right-hand drive to left-hand drive. These are much more important than labour market reforms and much less contentious.

Imagine gradually shifting from left-hand driving to right-hand driving. There are two possible problems which could present themselves. The Left will undoubtedly protest at this obvious swing to the right, unlike economic reforms, where the swing is only implicit. And drivers in Delhi will be extremely confused.

The switch away from cricket is easier to implement. Notice I said switch away from cricket. This does not necessarily imply a switch towards baseball. Circumstances and data have changed since that paper was written. There have been reports about all of Hong Kong being on leave for a month in view of the football World Cup. The Americans have graduated from women8217;s football to the men8217;s category. Not to speak of China, Japan and South Korea. Therefore, if you redid the exercise, you would find that football-playing countries also have a higher GDP than cricket-playing countries.

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The switch to football will also have the support of the Left in Kerala and West Bengal. And the glorious uncertainty traditionally associated with cricket has now come to be associated with football. Witness Senegal and the US. The whiff of corruption, which attracts us to cricket, has also rubbed off on football. There is also the Keynesian multiplier idea. Many people argue that the government should spend to kick-start the economy 8212; only this finance minister has no idea about how to go about this. Money allocated to ministries is not spent. With football, the spending on stadia is obvious and look at the wonders this has performed for the Japanese and South Korean economies. Even in India, the moment the present World Cup got under way, there are signs that the economy is past the worst of the downturn and consumer expenditure has perked up.

Let us not be deterred by our 123rd FIFA rank. Our human development ranking is only marginally better. Does that mean we cease to strive for human development? Given our obsession with Pakistan, notice also that cricket tends to hyphenate us. But in football we are in a different league, notwithstanding our 123rd rank. As yet another positive fallout, football will now inevitably bring us closer to the Americans and all kinds of joint exercises are possible. As long as the emphasis on cricket continues, football will never get out of the import-substituting mode, exemplified by imports of footballers into West Bengal. Country after country has demonstrated that success comes through export promotion, exporting footballers to European clubs and importing European coaches instead.

In conventional economic reforms, there is always the argument that there is no popular demand for liberalisation and this constrains the government. Not in football. Witness how the demand for Ten Sports has forced local cable operators to circumvent multi-service operators and broadcasters. What else do you need to demonstrate the utter stupidity of the proposed amendment to the Cable Television Networks Regulation Act? Consumers will get what they want. This idea of the government decreeing tiers and channels is ridiculous.

The case for switching to football rests. Let8217;s bend it like the Americans. We should bid for hosting the football World Cup, not the Olympics, as the sports minister wants. Unlike cricket, host countries do better in football.