The foreign cheerleaders were brought in to show India’s cricket fans how to shake their pompons – but not everyone was impressed.
The New Delhi team said Wednesday it was switching its cheerleaders for a band of drummers. Mumbai politicians have forced theirs to cover up, saying their performances were lewd and not appropriate for India’s traditional culture.
The cheerleaders were flown in to give a touch of glamour to the Indian Premier League – a newly launched cricket tournament that brings together the sport’s biggest international stars, million-dollar contracts, big business and celebrities.
Cricket in its purest form is a serene game that lasts five days and is played by men in white who take breaks for tea.
But the Indian Premier League presents a flashy, rapid-fire version that is played in just five hours under floodlights with players in colourful uniforms.
The league has been posited as a celebration of the new India: brash, confident, cosmopolitan and rolling in money from a decade-long economic boom.
Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya flew in the Washington Redskins cheerleaders to boost his team, which he named after one of his whiskeys – the Bangalore Royal Challengers. Other team owners flew in troops of dancing beauties from Eastern Europe.
For a brief moment all was good. They whirled and bounced and cheered. Miniskirts flared and pompons shook as cricket players batted balls out of the park.
But it was all too much for the other India – a deeply conservative country where public displays of sexuality are taboo and women are expected to dress modestly.
The backlash began in Mumbai last week when lawmakers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party pressed to get cheerleaders banned from the home games of the local team, the Mumbai Indians.
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