India's Intense Cricket Fandom
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 16 Sep, 2025

To imagine what cricket is to Indians, combine the fan bases of the NFL, MLB and NBA, then crank up the nationalistic fervor until the meter breaks.

In 2007 I was visiting family in India while the cricket world cup was underway in Trinidad.  

As an American my cricket knowledge was lacking.  But I didn’t need to be an aficionado to understand the gravity of India being eliminated from the tournament after losing to Bangladesh, a country that can best be described as India’s much-littler brother and was ranked second to last.

But the story splattered across the front page of every Indian newspaper the day after the match wasn’t just that India had lost.  It was that following the match, the home of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India’s star defender, had been vandalized.

I tried to think of an American sport where fans can get that intense.  As a New York Yankees fan, I could personally never imagine trying to inflict actual pain on a member of the Boston Red Sox, even though I would give my first-born to see them defeated in an American League Championship Series.

But here’s what especially blew my mind:  The destruction that had been wrought on a prominent Indian player’s home was perpetrated by India fans.

Indian cricket, it became clear, was more intense than even the most rabid sports fanbases in the United States. 

Cricket in India cannot be disentangled from national pride.

The 2007 Cricket World Cup

The disgruntled fans who showed up to Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s house in the Eastern city of Ranchi began by burning effigies of the 26-year old wicket-keeper and chanting“Dhoni Die Die.”  And it didn’t stop there. 

The crowd of roughly two hundred fans began hurling bricks and stones and tearing down pillars of his house, which was still under construction. 

They also came with demands: 1) The government revoke the 360 square meter plot of land that they had granted Dhoni to build his house on 2) The Indian cricket team returned home from Trinidad immediately.

One might justifiable wonder if this was an isolated incident, perpetrated by one characteristically aggressive subset of fans. It wasn’t. 

While no other homes were damaged, similar protests targeting players in the cities of Kolkata and Ahmedabad were reported as well.

And in an unrelated incident, one Indian cricket fan, a 47 year-old fruit vendor from Gujarat,  had a heart attack and died as a result of the match.

According to his brother “Vinod, a die-hard cricket fan, was very upset with India losing quick wickets.  The fall of the fourth Indian wicket came as a big shock to him and he suddenly became unconscious.  We immediately rushed him to a local hospital, where doctors declared him dead.”

Back in Ranchi, when Dhoni did ultimately return home, he was forced to take cover at a police station when a mob followed him home from the airport.  “It felt as if we had committed a big crime, maybe like a murderer or terrorist,” he described.

One might naturally wonder if Dhoni would quit the sport, wanting nothing to do with the alleged “fans” terrorizing him. Instead, he helped his team to victory at the next world cup as well as countless other tournaments.  The 2007 incident, he would say, “Had a big impact on me, and I channelised the aggression to become a better cricketer and a better human being.”

Bollywood actors like Shah Rukh Khan or cricket players like Sachin Tendulkar are often viewed the same was as larger than live figured like Gandhi or even deities.

American Sports

I’m hard-pressed to think of a comparable in American sports, though it’s true that sports rivalries in the US have a tendency to cross a line. 

In 2010 a fan of the University of Alabama’s football team served time in jail for poisoning a collection of historic trees at the rival school, Auburn University.

Last NFL season, a Philadelphia Eagles fan lost his job after a viral video captured him using abusive language to denigrate a female fan of the team’s opponent, the Green Bay Packers.

Just last week, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Alexander was seen shoving a fan of the opposing New York Bills after the Bills fan hit him on the helmet.

But while unfortunate, none of these instances involves a team attacking its own players. . 

Sure, fanbases in the US may go as far as criticizing their own teams over performance.  Yankees manager Aaron Boon is frequently the subject of #FireBoone posts on Twitter.  

And massive banners that read “FIRE NICO” became a staple of the Dallas Mavericks this past NBA season after the team’s general manager Nico Harrison traded star player Luka Doncic to the LA Lakers for arguably little in return. But none of these grievances extend beyond words. 

So what makes India’s cricket fandom so much more intense than that of American sports fans?

National Identity

As the US knows all too well, certain sporting events have a tendency to become proxies for national pride, particularly on a global stage. 

A few historic examples include US’s upset victory over Soviet Russia in the 1980 hockey tournament dubbed “The Miracle on Ice”, or the 1935 Berlin Olympics in which Jesse Owens, a black track athlete, dominated Germany right before Hitler’s very eyes. 

Even just this past spring, following weeks of President Trump denigrating Canada and stating his desire to make it “the 51st state,” our two countries met in the finals of the Four Nations Faceoff hockey tournament.  When Canada eked out a victory, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game.”

It’s tough to overstate the extent to which India, too, latched on to cricket as a proxy for national pride. 

In some ways, it was a much needed distraction during years of bloodshed and humiliation under British colonial rule. 

And once India gained its independence in 1947, the sport became even more meaningful as the team’s success could be seen as a reflection of nobody but them.

Post-partition matches were especially important, not just for India but the newly formed countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, who were each eager to make a statement on the world stage.

Imagine what it meant for India to beat Pakistan.  Or, more importantly, Britain. 

Consolidation

Cricket’s monopoly on sports fandom in India is a major contributing factor to the extent of the sport's popularity.  While the US has a number of popular sports with diverse fanbases, cricket in India is more or less the only game in town, save some fluctuations in soccer's popularity which has failed to stick as it has across Europe.

It’s also worth noting that football, for example, does not have global competitions in the way that cricket does, making it harder for Americans to rally behind it as a source of national pride. 

According to a 2024 Ipsos poll, 45% of Americans consider themselves professional football fans. The second most popular pro-sport is baseball, which 31% of Americans are fans of, followed by basketball at 24%. 

By contrast, over 90% of Indians are cricket fans. 

That’s far more than the 40% of Indians who speak Hindi and still higher than the 80% who ascribe to Hinduism.

In fact, there are actually some legitimate comparisons between India’s cricket fandom and religion.

Religion

There’s a book about former cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar titled “If Cricket Is a Religion, Sachin is a God.”

While Tendulkar, considered the Tom Brady or Michael Jordan of cricket, is often referred to as The God of Cricket in a playful manner, there is certainly some truth to the idea that he and other star players are viewed in the same vein as deities.

To be fair, the Indian tendency to idolize certain figures is not unique to athletes but extends to Bollywood stars as well. 

Actor Shah Rukh Khan, for example, is considered the most famous actor in the world despite being virtually unknown in the west.  Every day, hundreds if not thousands or adoring Indian fans gather outside the balcony of his Mumbai home.  When his 2023 movie Jawan was released, fans were seen pouring milk over the film's posters, which is a symbolic religious offering in Hinduism.

Hinduism is ,of course, known for the worship of multiple gods. In some ways, a mindset of embracing multiple figures opens the door for the worship of certain celebrities. 

Compare that to, say, Christianity, where the worship of anyone other than Jesus is viewed as blasphemy.

Partition can also, once again, serve as an explanation for the idolization of cricket players. 

If the gross oversaturation of superhero films in Hollywood today has taught me one thing, it’s the need for larger than life figures to look to in times of hopelessness. 

In India, those figures were Gandhi, Nehru, and others who quite literally saved millions from colonization.  In their absence, many have transposed their idolization to pop cultural heroes who elicit national pride in other ways. 

Financial Elements

Despite India’s outsized fandom for a single sport, the financial revenue of the NFL alone far eclipses that of cricket in India.

The Indian cricket board, BCCI, brings in about $3 billion in revenue a year.  Contrast that with the NFL, which rakes in $19 billion and is, of course, a substantially less popular sport in a substantially less populous country. 

The NFL also continues to eclipse India through other financial metrics including player salary, and media rights.

There are a few reasons for this, including the formats of the respective games.  The constant game breaks in the NFL make the sport highly conducive to commercial breaks, unlike cricket which runs for significantly longer stretches. 

But the single biggest explanation lies in the economic status of each county’s population.  The US enjoys a median household income of approximately $75,000.  That number is between $2,000 and $3,000 dollars in India.  Or compare the US’s $85,000 per capita GDP to India’s at $2,700, 1/30th the size.

But at the same time, the economic situation may help describe why Indian fans are ultimately more devoted.  One could argue that a lack of financial incentives points to Indian fandom as being born purely out of love of the game. 

I might even liken it to the difference between a well-funded political campaign that gets beaten by a grassroots candidate with substantially fewer resources.  Few would disagree that the underdog likely succeeded because of the passion of their supporters, even if those supporters lacked the resources to contribute financially.

Match Won 

Approximately 615 million unique viewers in India tuned in to watch at least some part of the 2023 cricket world cup. That’s over 40% of the country.

For comparison, the 2025 Super Bowl set a record with 127.7 million viewers.

In some ways, even trying to compare cricket to a sport like football misses the point that there simply is no comparison to India’s relationship with cricket.

Factors like India’s history of partition, economic status, and religious affiliation have created the perfect storm when it comes to fandom of the sport.

Some American athletes may envy the idolization that cricket stars receive.  That is, until they have a bad game.