22 strange things Indian cricket fans have done

India superfan Sudhir Kumar Gautam had once cycled from Muzaffarpur to Mumbai to meet Sachin Tendulkar. When India won the 2011 World Cup, Tendulkar invited him to celebrate with the team. (Photo via X)

Content warning, trigger warning: Contains mentions of suicide and self-harm.

Gajodhar, a school student in Delhi, was suspended earlier this month for answering every question in a mathematics test with the word ‘Thala’, the Tamil word for ‘leader’. The obvious reference was to M.S. Dhoni, who had led the Chennai Super Kings to a record-equalling five IPL titles.

This was far from the first unusual act by an Indian cricket fan. In Bombay (now Mumbai), many used to wait outside Sunil Gavaskar’s residence for a darshan. In Calcutta (now Kolkata), fans threatened to halt Test matches after their favourites – Mushtaq Ali in the 1940s, Kapil Dev in the 1980s – were left out. In Jammu, “hundreds of cricket lovers” threw stones at the cable television office after transmission was disrupted during an India-Pakistan match. A female fan travelled from Hyderabad to meet Rahul Dravid at his home in Bangalore – and refused to leave.

The list is long. This is, after all, one of the largest, most diverse fanbases across sports.

The superfans – Sudhir Kumar Gautam and Ram Babu

You know who Gautam is if you have followed cricket in the 21st century. He is the one with the Indian tricolour and ‘Tendulkar 10’ painted across his face (he added ‘Miss U’ when Sachin Tendulkar retired) and blows a conch when the Indian team takes field.

Gautam had once cycled from Muzaffarpur to Mumbai to meet the great man. When India won the 2011 World Cup, Tendulkar invited him to celebrate with the team.

Just as famous is Ram Babu of Mohali, who has ‘Dhoni 7’ and the tricolour painted across the torso. He might have arrived after Gautam, but his ability to maintain the decibels throughout the day is at least at par.

He had been taken ill in Bangladesh, where he had travelled for the 2014 World Cup. M.S. Dhoni paid for his air ticket back home, and for subsequent medical bills.

The things one does for love

Ravindra Kumar Saini of Saharanpur had a problem in 2009. Sonia, his fiancée, had agreed to marry him… but only if he got photographed with Dhoni. So, Saini sold his shop of audio and video CDs to fund a trip to Ranchi. This was not easy: he sometimes had to sleep on the pavement and even skip meals.

But Saini refused to give up. The news eventually reached Dhoni via his brother-in-law Gautam Gupta. Dhoni shook hands with Saini in front of the cameras. It took 35 days.

As an aside, 2009 was an interesting year for Dhoni fans. Across Ranchi, kites with his pictures were so much in demand that manufacturers struggled to keep up.

The many stories of the 2007 World Cup

Sarun Sharma of Jamshedpur had put a kidney up for sale to fund his trip to the West Indies for the 2007 World Cup: “Anybody can survive with one kidney, but you will never get the opportunity to watch India win the cup in the West Indies.”

When he threatened to jump off a bridge, the police had to detain him for a while. The sale did not go through – and India were eliminated in the first round.

The defeat did not go down well back home. In West Bengal, a couple tried to hang themselves. While the rope snapped and Sadhana Sarkar survived, husband Mahadeb died.

Fans set posters on fire at Ahmedabad, Jalandhar, and Amritsar, among other places In Kanpur, a funeral procession was brought out with eleven ‘corpses’. In Jharkhand, M.S. Dhoni’s house was vandalised.

Across the nation, fans also lived up to ‘tradition’ of burning effigies of cricketers – a practice that, over time, has been replaced by abuse of the players and their families on social media. In Jind, Haryana, things reached another level: the leaders across 28 villages banned playing, or even mentioning cricket.

But the most unexpected impact was on an unusual industry. Cricketers’ photographs on the covers used to form “60 to 70 percent” of all school notebooks: that went out of fashion. That summer, “speeding cars” became the in-thing for notebook covers.

The imprisoned

Six inmates of the Guwahati Central Jail filed a public litigation, demanding they be shown every match of the 2015 World Cup (Doordarshan used to telecast only India’s). Justice Arup Kumar ordered the prison authorities to install a cable connection within five days.

But perhaps a more iconic prison incident took place in 1985, when one Bhukha Singh Yadav wrote a letter from Gwalior Jail, congratulating Rajinder Goel for becoming the first man to get 600 Ranji Trophy wickets. Goel wrote back.

Back in 1948, Don Bradman was playing his last Test series. Devdas Gandhi, son of the Mahatma, managed a ticket for the Trent Bridge Test match, but every hotel in Nottingham was fully booked. He convinced the warden at the Nottingham County Jail to let him spend a night.

The man they call God

Back in 1999, news spread that Tendulkar might retire due to a back spasm. This troubled Deepa Vasanthalaxmi, an 18-year-old from Mysuru, so much that she died by suicide. Tendulkar played on for another 14 years.

Ratilal Parmar, on the other hand, collects currency notes with serial numbers with Tendulkar references. For example, he became part of the news cycle in 2012 when he acquired a ten-rupee note with the number 240412 – Tendulkar’s birthday that year.

Haji Kaleemullah Khan of Malihabad, Uttar Pradesh breeds new varieties of fruits, especially mangoes. In 2010, he developed a hybrid between gudshah and chausa and named it after Tendulkar. Elsewhere, Dhruv Prajapati, a PhD aspirant in spider taxonomy, named a species of spider Marengo sachintendulkar.

Anything for cricket?

There was a power failure in Kallippara, Kerala, during a 1999 World Cup match. Desperate to resolve the matter, a 26-year-old man climbed an electrical pole. He was electrocuted.

Locals had decided to use a rarely used runway of the Solapur Airport to play cricket. In 2006, when an Air Deccan aircraft attempted an emergency landing, the pilot had to put on emergency brakes, bursting both rear tyres in the process. Thankfully, no one was harmed.