Ramachandra Guha: India is far from being Vishwa-Guru – but in cricket, it has become Vishwa-Bully

Ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister in May 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have loudly proclaimed their ambition to make our country a “Vishwa-Guru” – Teacher to the World. With every passing month, however, they seem ever further from realising this ambition. However, whatever our failures in international politics, in the sphere of international cricket India is now the most powerful actor. Whether its actions are always or even often to the benefit of cricket is another matter altogether.

Back in 2017, I spent a few months as part of a Supreme Court-appointed “Committee of Administrators” that sought – in the end unavailingly – to bring more accountability and transparency to the activities of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. I found BCCI officials consumed by the desire to bring all other cricketing boards to heel.

As a historian, this worried me, since I knew of how, in the past, the imperial arrogance of White nations had rarely worked to the advantage of the game itself. As I wrote in my 2022 book, The Commonwealth of Cricket: “I told my colleagues in the BCCI that English and Australian hegemony had often worked against the larger interests of...

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