There's an article in The Print today which cites the paper by the NLSIU grads However, IMO the article also ends up debunking it. The article shows how interest in cricket is now driven by small towns rather than metros. The cricketers are from non-graduate, non-metro working class backgrounds and sponsors are rural brands. IMO this shows that economic globalisation, rather than statist affirmative action, leads to diversity.

P.S. Kian: Why is the OP marked trollish?

https://theprint.in/ground-reports/india-funding-world-cricket-and-its-riding-on-paan-masala-tractor-rebar-deo-market/1841139/

Holy Shit.

An international sport (albeit only a handful of countries take cricket seriously) is the competition between elites, reservation will destroy Indian cricket, and more people will exit the country to play for a "fairer" country, and tbh no country would think twice before accepting the likes of Iyer or Ashwin.

Instead Dalit cricketers can be given some reservation in BCCI run academies etc, but not on national level, absolutely no.

Here is my solution to this. All cricket teams worldwide should save 2 slots in the final XI for socially and educationally backward communities, e.g. Dalits and Muslims in India, blacks and Muslims in England and South Africa, Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh, etc. Barring Pakistan, this ratio is largely followed already, e.g. Ngidi and Bavuma in SA, Shami and Siraj in India, Liton Das in Bangladesh, Mooeen Ali, Rashid and Archer in England, Khwaja in Australia.

If a team can't field 2 such players, the opposing team should be awarded 50 penalty runs in a test, 25 in an ODI and 15 in a T20. Sounds pretty fair to me.

By this measure, the backward classes are overrepresented in the hockey team, the football team, boxing, etc. Should we have a quota for the non-backward classes in that?

What about Anglo-Indians, Christians, Parsis, or Jains? Let's have one club-level Parsi play for India every 15 test matches? And, an Anglo-Indian every 10 matches? And let us not aggreate all "adivasis" in one bucket, each tribe should have representation. I want a Khasi cricketer to be forced to play for India once every 100 test matches and a Balti crickter (we do have a few Balti villages in Kargil district) should play once every 1000 test matches. We should keep a close eye on each community and thier proportion in the population and ensure they are forced to play in the playing 11 for a proportionate time of a match (not the whole match, that would be unfair to someone, I'm sure).

I hope that when you spend on groceries, you ensure that you spend your money based on the corporate ownership of the company (ok ok, as at 31 March, not on an everyday basis, fair point!) which owns the brand and the caste and religion of the grocery shop owner. How do we ensure that the supply chain's caste and religious identity is communicated down the line so that all of us can make ethical choices?

For NLSIU haters making sarcastic comments, please note:

1. One of the authors, Shubham Jain, has an LLM from Cambridge and is currently doing his PhD from Cambridge. His thesis is on this very subject.

2. This paper has been cited by eminent intellectual Prof Dilip Mandal in Print:

https://theprint.in/opinion/indian-cricket-seeing-tectonic-shift-yadavs-mavi-chahal-patel-hooda-leading-the-change/1304067/

Coming to the argument itself, currently 4 out of 11 are UC Hindus. Kohli and Jadeja are Khatriyas (Khatri and Rajput). Iyer and Sharma are obviously Brahmins. So 2/11 (18%) allocation to Kshatriyas and Brahmins each, which far exceeds their share of the population. The solution is simple: play Kohli/Jadeja and Iyer/Sharma in rotation, i.e. rest each of them every alternate game. The back up replacements should be unrepresented backwards classes like Dalits, Adivasis and North-East STs.

Do NLSIU people actually watch cricket?

Kuldeep Yadav, Surya Kumar Yadav = OBC

Shami, Siraj = Muslim

Shubman Gill, Bumrah = Sikh

KL Rahul = Lingayat

That's 7/11 who are not Upper Caste Hindus. How much more diversity do SJWs want??? Do you want to drop two Muslims and bring in two Dalits? What about minority representation then?