On India's World Cup victory

Dhoni acknowledges role of quartet
Vivek Menezes has a cautionary article Get a grip, India!. There are many good points in the article but I see it slightly differently. Many of the Indian players come from middle classes without many political or family connections. Eknath Solkar from Bombay was the son of a groundsman. M.S. Dhoni was ticket collecror in the railways for three years. Apart from giving hope and pride to several middle class and poor people, cricket also seems to some thing of uniting factor in a country with so much diversity like India. Many players came from different parts of the country and belong to different religions. The politics which plagued games like hockey seem to have subsided to a large extent in cricket. Influential players like saurav Ganguly backed players from many parts of the country outside Bengal. May be at the moment cricket's popularity cannot be begrudged. Perhaps similar events are taking place in Pakistan and Sri lanka too. There is also a tendency to define one country against the other which is unfortunate Indians Not As Large-Hearted As Pakistanis: Afridi
P.S. It seems that there are a number of scholarly works on cricket in India. There are some references in Cricket and Indian National consciousness by Emily Crick. In a different direction, there is an interesting paper by Aniruth Krishna and Eric Haglund Why do Some Countries Win More Olympic Medals? Lessons for Social Mobilty and Poverty Reduction in terms of 'effective participating population'.
P.P.S.Dhoni's 91 one of the greatest innings: Michael Atherton