India Dominates Afghanistan in T20, But Where Are the Fans?
There was a time when an India match stopped the country in its tracks. Streets emptied, living rooms filled, and every boundary felt like a national event. On Friday, as India brushed aside Afghanistan in the first T20, that old electricity was missing.
India won by seven wickets with almost seven overs to spare. On paper, it was a dominant performance. In reality, it felt like a game played in the shadows.
Scroll through social media and you’d barely know a series had begun. Even among regular followers of the sport, many simply didn’t realise India were playing Afghanistan in a T20. No build-up. No noise. No real conversation before or after the game.
The result itself should have been the starting point for debate: new combinations, fresh faces, a comfortable win. Instead, it floated past the wider cricket community almost unnoticed.
One reason is obvious. The absence of giants like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma has changed the emotional temperature around India’s T20 and Test cricket. With both having stepped away from these formats, the familiar hooks for casual fans are gone. The faces that once guaranteed attention are no longer part of this story.
Then there is the sheer volume of cricket. Series pile on series, formats blur into each other, and what once felt rare now feels routine. A bilateral T20, even involving India, struggles to cut through when there is always another match around the corner.
Those two forces together — star power fading from the format and constant, overlapping fixtures — have drained the anticipation that usually surrounds any Indian series, regardless of the opposition. The Afghanistan game was the latest example: a comfortable win, filed away and forgotten almost instantly.
The danger for administrators is clear. If this trend continues, upcoming series against so-called smaller teams risk becoming background noise, followed only by the hardcore and ignored by everyone else. The question now is not whether India can keep winning these games.
It’s whether anyone will still care enough to watch.
