Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Spring 2024

Date of Submission

2024-09-09

Advisor

Palvashay Sethi, Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Keywords

Cricket, Politics, Fandom, Imran Khan, Babar Azam

Abstract

Ever since the country's early years of independence, cricket has slowly grown to become the most popular sport in Pakistan (Nisar). A symbol of identity, unity, and pride for the country, cricket quickly lined itself in the people's collective consciousness. From Pakistan’s first Test victory in 1952 to its World Cup victory in 1992, the euphoria surrounding Pakistan's cricketing victories has been skillfully used by the government to instil a sense of patriotism and unity among a population that has always had trouble creating an identity for itself (Chunying and Awan 868).

Cricket has the potential to bring people together, but what goes unnoticed is that cricket doesn’t exist in a vacuum divorced from ideas and organisations (both formal and informal) that operate beyond the cricket field. As CLR James writes in his book Beyond a Boundary, “Sport can act as a trap, safety valve and escape hatch, sport is no sanctuary from the real world because sport is part of the real world, and liberation and oppression are inextricably bound” (James xviii). This forces one to stop and think about not only the repercussions of cricket but also, what factors can affect cricket. For example, cricket sprouts a sense of nationalism in us through the feeling of pride. The nation-state then uses this nationalism to put forward its political agendas (Delaney and Madigan 319).

My thesis is a comparative critical analysis of Imran Khan and Babar Azam’s time as captain. I’ll focus on Imran Khan’s team from 1989 to 1992, including the year he won the World Cup and Babar Azam’s team over the last 6 years (2019-2024). I explore the difference thirty years have made to cricket from a political and fandom context.

In each chapter, I focus on how religiosity and the Pak-India rivalry intersect with politics and fandom. Since religion contributes to “the identity of a community” (Delaney and Madigan 347), one needs to analyse how religious values and norms influence cultural practices that further appear in the sport they support, since sports are part of the real world and bound with repercussions. The Pak-India rivalry is also part of our identity because we define ourselves by whether we can beat India (Lakhani), hence it further intersects with politics and fandoms.

My project falls under the theoretical frameworks of cultural studies, sports studies, political sociology, fandom studies and sociology of religion. It is primarily going to be a content analysis – this means I use various forms of media and books (socio-political histories, media coverage and online discussions in both these periods) to analyse the events and assess how cricket intersects with different domains.

Pages

91

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