IT’S been the week that has been dominated by the billion views which have been at the heart of the madness triggered by the X-rated Queen Nadia TV shows. Of course, there won’t be a billion television viewers watching India take on England in the final of the 2026 ICC Cricket Under-19 World Cup at Harare Sports Club today. Those are the regular television viewing figures on the occasions that India take on their biggest rivals Pakistan in cricket battles.
The teenagers, who are the next generation of Indian cricket superstars, don’t have the pulling power of the likes of Virat Kohli for them to draw a billion television viewers to watch their matches. But, in a country of over 1,476 billion people, where cricket is something close to a religion, you can be guaranteed that tens of millions of fans will be following their teenagers live on television today in their quest for World Cup glory. A 2018 survey by the International Cricket Council revealed that an estimated 90% of the world’s cricket fans live on the Indian subcontinent.
It’s a game that has been played in those parts of the world since 1721 when English sailors played a match in Tankari Bandar as they waited for the tide to rise. It also turned into a sport of resistance as Indian teams took on the British coloniers in battles which attracted massive crowds. There are many in India who describe cricket as an Indian sport which was accidentally founded in England.
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It’s the only sport, which was founded in the West, whose heart is now found on the Indian sub-continent. India is a country which is always on the lookout for the next generation of its cricket stars and there will be tens of millions of eyeballs on the team which will take on the English in Harare today. After all, the Indians still remember that it was at this tournament that a teenage Kohli announced his arrival on the big stage by captaining his country to World Cup glory in Malaysia in 2008.
The Indian Express newspaper described Kohli and his teammates as “a bunch of inspired teenagers who changed the way India played cricket all because of a young captain who commanded respect. “They were a fun-loving bunch but obsessively driven to be the best in the world.”
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