CRICKET IN EARLIER DAYS IN INDIA

The first cricket club in India was established in Calcutta in 1792, India's national cricket team did not play its first Test match until 25 June 1932 at Lord's.

India proved weaker than Australia and England, winning only 35 of more  than 200 Test matches they  played. The team, however, gained potency at the end of the 1970s with the emergence of players such as Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev and the Indian spinner Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan (both off spinners), Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (a leg spinner), and Bishen Singh Bedi (a left-arm spinner).

In the 1980s, India developed a more attacking batting line-up with hard-hitting batsman such as the Mohammed Azharuddin, Dilip Vengsarkar and all-rounder Ravi Shastri. With the assistance of these players India won the Cricket World Cup in 1983, defeating the favorites and two-time defending champions West Indies in the final, owing to a strong bowling performance.

 In spite of this, the team did poorly in the Test arena, including 28 succession Test matches without a victory. In 1984 aside from gaining ground in India. India remained a weak team outside the Indian subcontinent.

CRICKET IN SMALL TOWNS AND CITIES

Cricket is very popular in small towns and cities. If you look at the current Indian cricket team many of them like M.S Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar etc. The reason why many of them are from small towns and cities is that they took cricket as a passion and live for the cricket only while in metro cities they took it as a sport and play for the enjoyment.

Lack of Infrastructure

There are so many talented players in small towns for them cricket remains their only route to escape from the battle. The lack of exposure, funds, facilities in their own town hurts them. The small town cricketer is not getting ample opportunity to demonstrate their talent like other big cities cricketers.

IPL - Gift for Youngsters 

Indian Premier League is one of the best platforms for the youngsters from small towns or cities to get the attention of the selectors of the Indian cricket team. They make a lot of money from the team owner for playing in their squad. If they do well enough throughout the whole season their chances of paying more money to them in a coming IPL season by their own team franchises.

CRICKET A RELIGION IN INDIA

In India there are many religions but the faith that unites Indians better is Cricket only. It is said that cricketers are adored in India by their millions of passionate followers of all age groups, gender, caste. There are many legendary cricketers  like Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, M. S. Dhoni and the one who is known as the god of cricket is Sachin Tendulkar.

Money, Fame, Valor

These three factors Money, Fame, Valor that influenced cricket in India. These factors attracts people to be a part of cricket. In current era cricketers are earning bunch of money from endorsements. They make all the luxury facilities like frequent domestic and international tours, rewards and recognition. What else you need to become famous.

How Indians react towards cricket?

Indian people celebrate passionately the victory of Indian cricket team and effigies of players who won’t perform well are burnt after India loss the match. One good performance makes a playful god for the fans, yet another failure makes him hostile. It’s true fact that the Indian people want to see their team win at any cost.

CRICKET PLAYED IN INDIA

In the recent times Cricket has become really popular game among the people in India.Cricket is not the national sports of India yet all Indians feels like it is merely equal to national sport.

How can you say like that?

The turning point came in 2007; when Indian team was consider as a dark-horse but the victory of the Twenty-20 World Cup an unknown format within India and from there onwards, the recent win in the 2011 World Cup has ensured that cricket will continue to be India's national game.

WE ARE CHAMPIONS

After the formation of Indian Premier League in 2008 was initiated by Lalit modi and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). it has been an enormous success.

In current scenario  it has become a shorter way of earning money for all who are somewhere related to it. I want to share an incidence with you all last week before i went to an academy where i saw a father introducing his talented son to the coach and asking him to give placement to his son in any of the ipl teams rather than domestic teams or even in Indian team. He also told him i will pay you whatever it takes. This shows the mentality of the people and on seeing this i felt really bad.