Loyal to the name

“Arrogant mortal
You won’t last long
Challenging four-armed Shiva
To games of ping pong.”
From The Proverbs
of Bachchoo

Driving out of West London on the Sunday when Chelsea Football club is celebrating its victory over Portsmouth in the Football Association (FA) Cup is slow and difficult. The roads have been requisitioned by the police on behalf of the millions (OK, thousands!) of Chelsea fans who pour onto the streets and mill around West London before heading to Trafalgar Square and Soho to drink themselves silly and cause mayhem.
Neither is it safe to take a train south from Waterloo the same day as every inch of the train will be occupied by the blue and white clad Portsmouth fans drinking to drown their sorrow despite a very predictable loss. They carry blue and white flags, wrap themselves in blue and white banners, clap and sing chants in unison. Some even wear jesters’ hats with blue and white pom-poms to indicate that they are the fools of the tribe, as devoted to and humble before Portsmouth Football Club as I am to and before my favourite Sufi saint. And they will on occasion be sick and perhaps be rude to and pick fights with those whom they suspect, through presumption prompted by an Islamic beard or cap, for instance, are not of their persuasion or fealty.
On this day Portsmouth’s loss was predictable because they have less money. Chelsea Football Club is owned by what the newspapers call a Russian “oligarch” and has bought the world’s best international players. The players transfer from one to the other team for millions of pounds and each is paid fabulous weekly sums to belong and play. The club may be in debt on paper, but in our capitalist world being rich doesn’t mean having money, it means having access to money. If Roman Abramovich, the owner, waves his magic wand, in the shape of a plastic card, I expect, the nimble feet and kicking skills of the world are at his command.
The football teams called Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United or even Wigan or Portsmouth originated as teams drawing players from these towns and areas of towns. They used to be, until the world of commercial football was born, the genuine tribal representatives on the pitch of their area or town. As such, the local lads, the emblems of skill, stamina and alacrity of the community, would go out in their chosen colours and the rest of the town or area would rally to support their team.
The spectacle of thousands of fans clad in blue and white, screaming allegiance to Portsmouth or Chelsea when none of the players who wear their colours have the remotest connection, apart from the cheques in their off-shore banks, to either place, should give one pause.
Football is as much a tribal ritual as it is a game and the citizens of Chelsea certainly want “Chelsea” to triumph and seem not to be deterred by the fact that they are hoarsely cheering for a team composed of men from any and everywhere in the world but Chelsea!
One may be sure that in the approaching World Cup, the Nigerian or French teams will be wholly composed of Nigerians and Frenchmen respectively. At least the rule of nationals playing for a national team obtains in World Football as it doesn’t in the European League. David Beckham, a member of the British delegation applying for the 2018 World Cup to be held in Britain, could himself be playing for Real Madrid against Chelsea in a European match without the least sense of irony. It would be, theoretically, possible for 11 British-born players to be playing for a German team against 11 German-born players playing for a team with an English name. And still the English and German fans would mill around and, like the troops of Midean, prowl and prowl and shout slogans to encourage their respective geographic identities.
While the nationality barrier still obtains in World Cup football, it has become a trifle surmountable in world class cricket. The joke going the round in the UK is, “Where do the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) team stay when they are playing against the home team in South Africa?” Answer” “With their parents!”
Which brings us to the inevitable internationalisation that has taken place in world cricket. The Indian Premier League (IPL), initiated by India, despite all its troubles, has rapidly established itself as an international institution. It was a departure waiting to happen. That it modelled itself on the buying patterns of the European football leagues was, given their success, also predictable. The other stroke of genius was to encourage the capitalist owners of the teams to identify the names of their teams with an Indian city or state, despite the captains and the kings of the teams originating in Australia, New Zealand, the UK or anywhere else that plays cricket (except Pakistan, for some obscure reason).
The games would be just as exciting if the teams were called “The Bottles” or “Devnagari” or even “Fred”, but they wouldn’t then have a core fan-base of tribal, territorial allegiance. The visceral appeal is to the place from where you come. That has to form the nuclear bulk of supporters even though I know that there are, for instance, denizens of Poole who follow the IPL games and, never having ever crossed the English Channel, feel an affinity with, cheer for and bet on their adopted team — say, the “Pune Peddlers”.
This dissolution of nationalisms was foreshadowed by the probably pre-historic practice of hiring mercenaries in national armies. Greeks were recruited to fight against Greeks in the armies of Xerxes and Darius III and very famous European mercenaries fought under and even commanded the banners of native Indian kings against each other and the East India Company in the 18th and 19th centuries. The tradition lives on and the Indian mobs support it.
What the new dispensation does is dispense with the bias of birth. The US Constitution specifies that the President has to be born in the US. There is a loony faction in America that has set out to prove that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii as his birth certificate claims. There is no parallel move as yet to modify the Constitution and enable, say, a Parsi born in Pune a long time ago to stand for President of the United States.