LSE Literary Festival 2017 | Cricket as Revolution [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Prashant Kidambi, Peter Oborne | 'Cricket is an Indian game accidentally invented by the English': one of India's leading public intellectuals once proclaimed. Ashis Nandy's provocative claim might well be extended to the rest of the subcontinent now. Cricket was brought to the Indian sub-continent by British colonial officers who chose to not teach it to the natives. However, the game was learned through watching and soon gained popularity resulting in a tour of England by an Indian team in the early part of the twentieth century. This panel explores how the story of cricket between England and South Asia has been nothing short of revolutionary, upsetting colonial power balances and creating unexpected alliances. Divided in all manner of ways, South Asia countries seem to have found in this colonial game an unlikely force for national unity. From Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, the game is now pursued in the subcontinent with a passion that defies easy explanations and which