INDIA came to England for this summer’s Test series as the dominant power in world cricket, having emerged as a formidable force across all formats. India’s on-field strength is matched by a commercial clout that flows from the lucrative viewing audience and franchise cricket model that it offers the sport.
If that power makes you uneasy, peer closer and glimpse how cricket affects poverty and touches the untouchable — as one Christian charity discovered.
Peter Waddup is the chief executive of the Leprosy Mission Great Britain (TLM) and now calls India his “second home”. Leprosy continues to affect millions worldwide: some 222,000 new cases are reported annually. More than half are located in India.
“I first experienced India backpacking with my wife in 1990s Bombay (now Mumbai). I came across a leprosy colony and crossed the road,” he confesses. Several years later, however, a conversation about TLM at church moved him to volunteer with the charity, and, in 2017, he become its chief executive.
Mr Waddup visits frequently an India of forgotten places and forgotten people. “Leprosy is a disease of abject poverty,” he says. “It occurs where people are malnourished and breeds in such situations. People ignore the symptoms; so they develop, leading to the loss of limbs or sight. Leprosy can lie dormant for ten to 15 years; so we invest in research for a diagnostic tool to provide drugs that prevent the development and spread of leprosy — but we also have to help those suffering now.”
IT WAS learning about TLM’s work in the Mumbai slums that reframed my lens from India’s cricket power to the people it represents, many of whom face unimaginable difficulties. “As you travel through urban or rural India, you don’t need to look far to see cricket, whether professional, organised, or a makeshift stick and ball,” Mr Waddup says.
At the leprosy vocational training centres (VTCs) that TLM runs to educate children with leprosy (who are excluded from state schooling), “they all love cricket, and are always playing. I have never met an Indian youngster who doesn’t have a favourite player from the Indian cricket team. When India play a Test match, everyone knows about it.”
Figures estimate that 300 million television viewers in India watched their team play in the 2023 World Cup Final, and that the 2025 Champions Trophy Final garnered the largest non-World Cup audience. India also brought new wealth to cricket through the franchise model that it launched in 2007 with the Indian Premier League (IPL), enabling large player and TV contracts. It has proved popular, lucrative, and trailblazing.
The need for players for the IPL has fostered a culture of talent-scouting, which has provided aspiring cricketers with the chance to enjoy the kind of comfortable life hitherto confined to professions such as medicine, accountancy, and engineering.
Yashasvi Jaiswal, one of India’s opening batsmen, travelled alone, aged ten, from rural Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai. Living rough by the Azad Maidan, where he practised, his potential was spotted in 2013 by Jwala Singh, who became his legal guardian and coach. At 18, Jaiswal debuted for the IPL’s Rajasthan Royals; at 20, he was selected for the India Test team, in which he has remained, clocking centuries against the West Indies, Australia, and England.
In England, the social mobility enabled by cricket is less evident: the sport remains tied to independent schools; a report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket identified barriers related to school and grass-roots pathways.
But cricket, with its Commonwealth reach, has the potential to foster cohesion between disparate communities; to offer a common language, from public schools to migrants; and to broker opportunity — an unharnessed potential that organisations such as Chance to Shine, the Johnners Trust, ACE, and SACA seek to tap.
INDIA has made cricket a leveller. While leprosy robs feeling from limbs, precluding a professional career, cricket still changes lives. Mr Waddup has played at Champa Leprosy VTC in Chhattisgarh, one of six VTCs operated by the TLM India Trust alongside its 14 hospitals, while Satish Sawant, at Apanga Leprosy NGO, Maharashtra, reports a culture of inter-colony tournaments, building confidence and community, and transforming colonies from “places of survival” to “places of celebration, connection, and resilience”.
Connection is no small contribution, because leprosy removes you from society. “Leprosy can be easily cured, but stigma is harder to combat,” Mr Waddup says. “We educate employers, the health services, and government, explaining that leprosy is not infectious.” The charity has engaged companies such as Tata and Mahendra Motors to employ VTC leavers. In Chhattisgarh, where 60 per cent of leavers are affected with leprosy, 90 per cent have secured work.
The connection between cricket and leprosy is not new. Steve Waugh has long been involved with the Udayan colony in Kolkata, but India’s use of its cricket superpower to change lives offers sobering lessons to English cricket.
Influence over the global game has conferred a softer, nobler power in India, where boys from poverty now buy parents their first home, and people ostracised by leprosy find community and joy — promises echoing through every Shubman Gill cover drive this summer.
Sharmila Meadows is a freelance journalist and a member of Surrey CCC.
