Cricket Dbq

In around the 1860’s, Cricket was introduced to South Asia by the British colonialists. Ever since then, it has had an enormous impact on everyone one involved, thousands of people played cricket around South Asia, ranging from child to adult, Cricket attracted all. It unified the people of South Asia with themselves and loosened tensions with the British. From 1880 to 2005, Cricket positively influenced the Political, Religious, and Social relationship between South Asia and the British. It had a key role in the political decisions for nearly two centuries.

Cricket’s ability to unite people and create healthy competition led to better political decisions made during that time. The Quadrangular tournament was a cricket competition based with four teams represented by Muslims, Hindus, Europeans and Parsis. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the head of the Muslim League, thought that Cricket established a much stronger relationship between Hindus and Muslims. In 1924, he stated, “I hope that our Hindu brethren as sportsmen would be no less pleased but also rejoice at the Muslims winning the championship.” (Doc.5) His statement along with his political career led him to be leader of Pakistan when it separated from India. His sentient towards the Hindus led to easier political decisions and a smoother partition of India. The healthy competition between Indians and British was undeniably a positive influence from Cricket. The British always viewed the Indians on a lower stage, meaning that they thought that they were better than the Indians. This however, was not the case in Cricket, as the Indian national team was able to defeat the British on several occasions. An Indian writer, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, explained was Cricket was their only chanced to be registered equal to the British, “The English have always ridiculed us as ‘effete.’ It is on the sporting field that we may counter such false allegations.” (Doc. 6) This shows that they were determined to be better than the English and it helped ensure more say in political decisions because they were starting to be viewed more as equal. At times, Cricket has convinced people not to fight and instead, resolve their issues in a much more peaceful way. In 2005, Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, said “It’s not what you’ve seen in the papers, on television, the hostilities spewed out by the parliamentarians, or by various Prime Ministers; the common man wants peace … Let’s not resolve it right now; let’s not go to war on the issues; we have no hostility between peoples.” (Doc. 10). When Shaharyar Khan made that statement, he believed that Cricket could lead politicians to see that citizens did not want war. Cricket influenced the political decisions of those politicians because it brought to light the mindset of civilians that wanted peace. Throughout its long history, cricket altered the mindset of political leaders and led them to make better and more peaceful decisions. Not only did cricket change political choices, but it also changed religion and tensions between them.

During this time, Cricket also affected the religions that participated in matches. In fact, they had a Quadrangular tournament, a competition between 4 teams, each a different ethnicity or religion. Some people argue that Cricket caused tension between religions, like Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movement. In 1940, he replied to a Hindu cricket club’s request for his support by saying, “I should have thought that suck unsportsmanlike divisions would be considered taboo in sporting language and sporting manners.” (Doc. 8) However, without these teams, there would be no teams. The quadrangular tournament gave everyone a team to cheer for and it ensured a healthy pool of players to choose for each team. Because of this, cricket actually unified people of the same religion to one and other. Bal Thackeray, an Indian founder of the Hindu nationalist organization, stated that Indian Muslims should shed tears if they lose to Pakistan (Doc. 9). It is unarguable that Cricket spurs rivalry between two teams, but every sport does. It is healthy competition and rivalry. Having Pakistan fight against India in a cricket match is infinitely times better