Colours, Part Deux

What if my colour could be the only one to exist?

By the time this hits your inbox, I’d be in Delhi, surrounded by heat, smoke, and a diminishing will to live. As I navigate Indigo’s web check-in portal, I can almost feel the brown, dusty air scraping my skin. AccuWeather’s heatmap for the next week shows a shade that can only be described as blood.

With this weekend earmarked for a trip, I didn’t really have anything on the brew for today’s edition. And just as well, because, on Thursday, someone on Twitter shared snippets of Sharda Ugra’s latest article on the evolution of Indian cricket. One passage felt like a natural extension of my last essay, as if Sharda read it and went, “You think that’s it?”

In Colours, I discuss Narendra Modi’s recent rhetoric about Congress potentially turning cricket in India into a communal battleground. The irony is amazing, considering his party has already stained the sport so brazenly.

Modi and Amit Shah identified cricket as a cultural pillar in India early in their administrative journeys. Before he was given the keys to 7, Race Course Road, New Delhi, Modi had a five-year stint as the President of Gujarat Cricket Association. Shah followed him to that throne. Shah’s son, Jay, found himself in influential positions at both the GCA and the BCCI, before getting airlifted to the top floor of Indian cricket. It’s hardly surprising that Modi and Shah spearheaded the construction of a colossal cricket stadium in Ahmedabad, which has since become the default home ground for India, sidelining the rich cricket heritage of Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore.

We live in a world where H-Pop is an organised and curated music genre, BJP rallies play it, and Indian cricket’s headquarters are filled with people carrying souvenirs from these rallies. It’s a stroke of luck for Indian cricket fans with a left-leaning ideology that no one questions them about the moral conundrum of funding what is now essentially BJP’s cricket arm.

I concluded my last essay with a chuckle about how India’s new T20 kit carries an interesting addition: an orange sleeve. Sharda Ugra has something to say on the matter. And when she speaks, you listen. The following excerpt is from her essay, titled Modi Operandi, featured in the 2024 Wisden Almanack, and reproduced verbatim.

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It is ironic that the most brazen plan of all - a last-minute switch of the Indian jersey from blue to orange before the Pakistan match - proved unsuccessful. BCCI treasurer Ashish Selar called the story “absolultely baseless, and a work of someone's imagination.” But three independent sources - one each from the team, the ICC, and the BCCI - have confirmed the existence of an all-orange uniform, which was presented to the team as an alternative two days before the game. They had already been given a new training kit - an orange shirt and dark trousers - a week before their first fixture. When the all-orange kit arrived in the dressing room, the players looked nonplussed, according to an insider. Here, the story split into two versions. One, out first, said the uniform was rejected because “it looks too much like Holland”. The other had the Indian cricketers saying to each other: “This is not on... We won't do it... It is disrespectful to some members of the team.”

Why disrespectful? Orange is the colour worn by Hindu priests, sages, and mendicants; orange flags flutter over Hindu temples. But the colour has been appropriated as a symbol of hard-line Hinduism (Hindutva) by the BJP, now completing ten years in power. BJP cadres flaunt orange scarves, their rallies are awash with saffron. Green is regarded as the counter-colour, used in Islam in mosques and shrines, and on flags. To kit out the Indians in all-orange against the Pakistanis, in their familiar dark green, would've turned a high-voltage match into Hindu India against Muslim Pakistan. There were two Muslims in the Indian team, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj.

The ICC say the all-orange kit was presented to them by the BCCI as part of UNICEF's "One Day For Children" event held at every World Cup. Four years earlier, against England at Edgbaston, the Indians had worn a half-blue, half-orange jersey, which was auctioned off for charity. This time, the event had been earmarked for India's game against Sri Lanka in Mumbai on November 2, not Pakistan nearly three weeks earlier. But the BCCI weren't interested in the all-orange versus Sri Lanka. When images of the uniform, complete with ICC and World Cup logos, did the rounds online, the BCCI began receiving queries, prompting Shelar's denial.

All through the World Cup, the Indian team conducted themselves with sharpness on the field, and composure off it, whatever the pressure they faced from fans and politicians. There had even been a push to rename to team “Bharat” - the Sanskrit word for India. It was supported by the likes of Virender Sehwag and Sunil Gavaskar, but died a quick death. Then came the orange training shirt, followed by an all-orange kit. Each man in the squad, and every Indian cricket fan, knows the day may come when their playing uniform turns orange. Yet, at their home World Cup, regardless of the optics, Rohit Sharma's India chose to say: “Not on our watch, not here, not today.”

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I don’t think this is the last we speak on this topic. And we can always trust Sharda to let us know. Beyond being an excellent storyteller, she is a rare gem who has always, and I don’t use that word loosely, kept it real. Her work should be taken to journalism schools as an exhibit of strong, honest reporting. She is, quite simply, an institution.

And as her essay has illustrated in the brightest colours, the BJP whole-heartedly wants to paint Indian cricket orange. They’re meeting some resistance now - bless the players who refused to abide - but soon, they will appoint administrators who will defer with a bowed head, and who, in turn, will select a subservient team. It is inevitable.

Where does one go then? I suggest Scotland. The air is dewy and you get great whiskey.