Cult of a super fan: Bangladesh’s Tiger and Chacha Chicago
COLOMBO: Bangladesh are playing a warm-up game against the Sri Lanka Board President’s XI at the quaint Colombo Cricket Club ground. One voice booms around the relatively-empty stadium with tremendous energy. Shabash, Shabash boys. Keep it going. Following that, there is another sound that resonates in the Colombo air, so loud that it scares the crows away. The chant is “India, India”.
The voices come from Shoaib Ali and Mohammad Bashir, two cricketing super fans. Shoaib is the fan who paints his body to resemble the tiger and vociferously waves the Bangladesh national flag. Bashir is known as ‘Chacha Chicago’, hailing from Pakistan, living in Chicago but an ardent Indian team supporter.
Bashir and Shoaib represent the sub-continent cult of the cricketing super fan in addition to India’s Sudhir Gautam, Ram Babu and Sri Lanka’s Gayan Senanayake whose popularity matches that of the players.
Shoaib, who started out as a motor mechanic in a village about 50 km away from Dhaka, started his journey as a cricket super fan in the Asia Cup game between India and Bangladesh on March 16, 2012 when Sachin Tendulkar scored his 100th international century. “That match changed my entire life. I saw how Sudhir and Chacha supported India and I felt I must also support my team in the same way. When Bangladesh performed brilliantly in the Asia Cup, I decided to be like them,” he said.
Shoaib’s voice is tinged with emotion when he speaks about the last Twenty20 between India and Bangladesh, a onerun loss in the 2016 World T20 clash in Bangalore. “We were on the verge of winning. Looking at the way how we lost, I cried inconsolably,” Shoaib said.