Indian football thrives in pockets while cricket rules the nation
Perfect timing, cash, and stars made cricket unbeatable
The love is there; it just needs the right structure to grow
On Saturday night, Brazil play India at Kolkata's Salt Lake Stadium, the first time the two senior men's sides have ever met. India are ranked 138th in the world, Brazil fifth. At the pre-match press conference, Carlo Ancelotti was asked about football in a cricket-mad country.
His answer, "Cricket is part of their culture; football is not the most important game," was blunt, but he added that it doesn't mean Indians don't love football. Both halves of that sentence are true, and the gap between them is worth examining.
The Cricket Economy
Start with the first half. Cricket in India is a national economy. The BCCI is the richest board in the sport by a distance, and the IPL is among the most valuable leagues in the world per match. Its media rights run into billions of dollars, and sponsors queue for a slot beside it. Football, hockey, kabaddi and badminton have all grown, but combined they still earn a fraction of what cricket does. Cricket gets the advertising, the prime-time slots and the front pages.
When Football Was King
It was not always so. Football was arguably the people's game in eastern India long before cricket became a national obsession. Durand Cup football began in 1888, and the Calcutta clubs were already institutions.
In 1911, Mohun Bagan beat the East Yorkshire Regiment to win the IFA Shield, a victory that carried political meaning in colonial Bengal. India won Asian Games gold in 1951 and 1962 and finished fourth at the 1956 Olympics. In 1950, India qualified for the World Cup and did not travel. That is a long way from today's 138th.
Why Sporting Cultures Matter
Why does any of this matter? Because sporting culture is more than results. Brazil's identity is inseparable from Jogo bonito, England's from the Saturday terrace, America's from college football and Friday night lights. A sporting culture is a set of rituals, rivalries, songs and shared memories handed down in families.
It turns a game into belonging, and it produces the next generation of players and paying fans without anyone planning it. Countries with a strong sporting culture do not need to be persuaded to care. Countries without one have to build it from scratch.
Football's Islands Of Passion
Indian football does have a culture, but it is regional rather than national. Kolkata's Mohun Bagan and East Bengal derby can stop the city. Goa treats football as a way of life, Kerala packs stadiums for Kerala Blasters and sends out rivers of yellow, and the Northeast produces players in numbers that the rest of the country does not.
These are real, deep and passionate communities. But they are islands. Outside them, football tends to be something Indians watch on a screen, in the English Premier League or La Liga, rather than something they follow at home.
How Cricket Crowded Everything Out
Cricket's rise went the other way. Its roots were colonial and urban, but 1983 changed everything. Kapil Dev's World Cup win arrived just as television was entering Indian homes, and a generation saw it live. Liberalisation and satellite broadcasting in the 1990s then fed an appetite that Sachin Tendulkar came to embody.
The IPL, launched in 2008, wrapped it all in city franchises and Bollywood glamour. As cricket grew, other sports lost airtime and sponsors. Hockey, which once won eight Olympic golds, slipped to the margins, and football became a regional passion.
What Cricket Got Right
So what did cricket get right that others did not? A single, powerful governing body with commercial muscle, for one. A domestic structure, from the Ranji Trophy down to school and club level, that gives talent a visible path.
Stars that the country could see and feel it owned. A national team that won at the right moment, and a product, T20, designed for broadcasters and impatient audiences. And it needs little more than a bat, a ball and a patch of ground. Football has had the enthusiasm but has too often lacked stable administration, a clear league structure or a steady stream of success.
The Verdict
Ancelotti, then, is half right in a useful way. Football has not drained out of Indian culture. It has been confined to pockets while cricket became the shared national language. Saturday's match, full stands and all, shows how much latent love there is.
Whether that love turns into a lasting national football culture will depend less on one famous opponent than on whether Indian football learns, patiently, what cricket learned decades ago.
