Five Reasons why cricket is so popular in India 

#3 Emergence of superstars

Sachin Tendulkar is India's greatest ever batsman

Since their very first Test in England in 1932, it took India 39 years to win a Test series in that same country but prior to that, they had won a series in the West Indies. That period saw the emergence of India's first truly great batsman, Sunil Gavaskar, who showed that Indian opening batsmen could stand up to fast bowlers on foreign shores.

The game's popularity soared after that as more superstars emerged but it exploded to another level post the rise of Sachin Tendulkar and live TV coverage. The cricket-watching public became particularly enamoured with one-day internationals and as India featured in more and more of those matches, the popularity of the game knew no bounds.