When India’s mighty cricket squad lost to Australia at the World Cup final in November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the unusual step of consoling shocked players in the dressing room of a massive stadium named after himself.

Since then, Modi has invoked India’s most popular sport on the campaign trail, and some saw last year’s global sporting showpiece as the start of his re-election bid in national polls set to wrap up next week.

Cricket commentator Suresh Menon described the World Cup as an “extended election campaign,” as Modi seeks a rare third term.

While Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party may be turning it up a notch, cricket has been a part of India’s well-worn political playbook stretching back 70 years to when its first post-independence prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, played a charity match in Delhi.

“I don’t think there is any selfish interest in cricket from the prime minister … anyone in his position would do the same,” Devendra Prabhudesai, a prominent cricket commentator, said of Modi’s World Cup appearance at the 132,000 capacity Narendra Modi Stadium in his home state of Gujarat. “Politicians have been on board with cricket for years and this has benefited the game.”

There is little doubt about cricket’s connection to an electorate of some 970 million. The world’s most populous nation has some 125.2 million fans of the sport, according to an estimate by Mumbai-based consultancy Ormax, a number that swells considerably during major international tournaments such as the 2023 World Cup, when it was reported that 300 million Indians watched their team play the final.

During this year’s six-week election marathon, the 73-year-old Modi has leaned on the sport to sway voters of all stripes.

In April, he paid tribute to Mohammed Shami, the Muslim bowler who starred at the World Cup, during an election rally in Amroha, a Muslim-majority city in Uttar Pradesh state.

“The whole world has seen the amazing feat that … Mohammed Shami did in the Cricket World Cup,” Modi said at the time, adding that the 33-year-old was being given the Arjuna Award, one of the country’s highest sporting honors.

But the following month, Modi cited cricket in a warning that Muslims — India’s biggest religious minority — would get preferential treatment over the Hindu majority if the main opposition Congress party won at the polling booth.

“The Congress party’s intent is to give minorities a preference in sport,” Modi said. “It means, on the basis of religion, Congress will decide who stays in the cricket team and who won’t.”

Modi’s links to cricket run deep. In 2009, several years before he became India’s leader, he was named president of the Gujarat Cricket Association. And since taking the country’s top job, he has maintained a close relationship with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) which governs the game.

BCCI Secretary Jay Shah, described by the Guardian as “the most powerful single person in any sport anywhere in the world,” is the son of Modi’s home affairs minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, a former head of Gujarat cricket. The BCCI’s treasurer is BJP politician Ashish Shelar while Indian Premier League (IPL) chief Arun Dhumal is the brother of Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, a former head of the BCCI.

These links have generated criticism that the relationship between Modi’s ruling party and the cricket agency is too close.

“In the past, cricket was used by politicians but used to create social cohesion,” Sarthak Mondal, president of the Indian Sports Management Association and sports economics lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, told Nikkei Asia. “It has changed. The agenda of the BCCI seems to be following the same agenda as the BJP.”

The wildly successful IPL — its broadcast rights sold for $6 billion in 2022, making it one of the world’s most lucrative sporting competitions — may be key to the ruling party making good on a pledge to bid for the 2036 Olympics. Cricket will feature in the global contest from 2028.

Demands on security resources meant that the 2009 and 2014 IPL seasons were moved, in full or in part, overseas during an election year. But during the BJP’s tenure, the league has played at home amid elections.

“The IPL has played nicely in [the] BJP’s Make in India campaign,” Mondal said of a government drive to boost domestic growth. “The IPL is a huge festival, and so are the Indian elections. Both require a lot of public resources and by staging the IPL in India during the elections, they sent out a clear message to the average Indian.”