Haha, I still remember the shocked messages from my Desi buddy who moved to Melbourne a month before the 2015 World Cup. How utterly indifferent the Melbourne commute crowd was the next day. Like no one cared they had just won a world cup just a kilometer away yesterday.
https://twitter.com/dweplea/status/1459932403577675781
He was like, the randomest win by Richmond or the Hawks in AFL will have people sporting jerseys proudly in Melbourne for a week, but no one really cares as much about the Australian cricket team in Australia as in the rest of the world.
I guess that's one of the signs of a "developed" nation? People care more about pro sports team that national teams? Even the US, which takes great pride in its Olympics wins, rarely has more viewers for the Olympics than a typical primetime NFL game. It's nice but marginal.
I was a relatively new migrant in 2008 when China won more gold medals than the US for the first time ever. I thought that would shake the US zeitgeist. People barely noticed it. It was like, oh yeah, China got more gold. We will get em next time. And they did. That's it.
It's not like these countries aren't nationalistic. It's that their economies have evolved to the stage where pro sports is a better business to invest yourselves in, be it as an athlete, a business, or a fan. India with IPL is moving in that direction too.
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