Watching India’s stunning cricketing loss at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium last Sunday could have been a painful experience. But it wasn’t. As the debacle unfolded on the field, something beautiful happened in the stands. Cheers for South African players grew louder with each ball that arched into the seats for a six. The crowd was not rooting against India – it was rooting for quality cricket.



When an Indian crowd behaves badly, it makes front page news. But when it treats visiting players with respect and admiration, it barely makes the lead on the inside pages. This surely reveals a lot about the stereotype of unruly Indian crowds. But also, it tells us something about the relationship between fan cultures and the city.



It is tempting to see stadiums and the fan cultures they contain as metaphors for places. The massive, eclectic crowd could seem like a microcosm of the city surrounding it. At worst, in international sports, the crowd could represent a nationalist mob. But stadiums don’t just contain crowds, they produce them. They don’t just evoke one character of the city, they can manifest its many parts.



As a fan, once you step inside the stadium, you become a different person. You are no longer in complete control but swept up in visceral emotions: the tension before a key moment, the euphoria after a great play, the disappointment after a missed opportunity, and the buzz generated by the bright lights and roar of the crowd. Being a fan, watching a live sporting event, is a process of losing oneself.



Fan cultures in baseball



At the Tokyo Dome, irrespective of what happens on the baseball field, the crowd is electrifying from start to finish. Fans wave giant flags, unfurl massive banners and clang small plastic bats in coordinated chants. Team supporters sit in rival sections, competing throughout the game over who sings the loudest. Each player has a separate song, and when they step up to bat, fans sing at full throttle. The most hardcore supporters sit in the bleachers. Their chants are backed up by a 20-piece band led by a white-gloved conductor. Throughout the game, he gesticulates widely, blares his whistle and leads the side in a raucous and well-orchestrated cheer.



Yet despite the uniform chanting and competitive singing, the feeling inside the Tokyo Dome is relaxed and informal. This isn’t some Japan-in-miniature, replicating stereotypes of cold, hyper-modern efficiency. Instead, it is a warm and inviting space. Grandmothers clasp small cups of beer, middle-aged men bounce babies on their knees, mothers and sons share a box of rice and pickled vegetables, rows of old men slowly sip grapefruit cocktails. It feels more like an outing to a park than an orchestrated experience.



At Boston’s Fenway Park, stereotypes about a place get similarly inverted. The baseball stadium was built in 1912, before ballparks became massive amenity-filled mini-malls surrounded by a vast sea of parking. Fenway lacks grandeur (one player, new to the team, famously thought it was an empty warehouse when he showed up on the first day): the concrete floor is sticky with generations of spilled beer, the wooden seats are uncomfortably narrow, many seats have views obstructed by thick iron beams, and entire sections are angled away from the infield, forcing spectators to strain their necks throughout the game.



In the cold and rainy Boston spring, being a spectator at Fenway Park can be a trying experience. And yet, a plan to replace it with a new, modern stadium in the 1990s produced a huge outcry that threatened city leaders’ political careers. Its fans treat it like a lover: its blemishes are a sign of its beauty. In the United States, where infrastructure is designed along the principle of total avoidance of bodily discomfort – what cultural critique Richard Sennett calls a “freedom from resistance” – Fenway Park remains a remarkable exception.



Cheers for good cricket



Back at Wankhede, with the Indian flags hoisted high, the fans’ faces painted in tricolour, and the sea of light blue cricketing shirts, you would think the event was all about chest-thumping patriotism. But the first innings was all about respect, admiration, love, even for the South African players.



When Quinton de Kock reached a century, the crowd went wild. Three men in front of us – decked out in Indian cricket jerseys, face paint and hats – held up signs of support for every South African four and six. Throughout the Protean innings, loud chants of “A-B-D”, for AB de Villiers, could be heard around the stadium. When ABD hit a six, the men raised their arms and air-worshipped the South African batsman with pretend bows. When de Villiers’ ball flew into the stands for another six, the crowd roared in appreciation – not for South African victory but for cricketing skill. They wanted India to win, but more importantly, they wanted to see good cricket.



Perhaps crowds at major sports events shouldn’t be seen as straightforward reflections of a place but refractions of it. That’s why fan cultures have a way of surprising you. They take a place’s character and give it a twist, showing both the potential promise and problems of the city.



