Cricket and Curry: Why Glasgow Is Cricket Season Too

There is a very particular sound in Glasgow right now: a phone propped against a pint glass, a radio commentary drifting out of a kitchen window, someone's uncle shouting at a screen three streets away. India are touring England, and whether or not Glasgow has a ground hosting the action, the city is watching every ball.

A pairing older than either of us realised

There is a line that gets repeated a lot in food writing, and it holds up: if Britain taught India how to play cricket, India returned the favour by teaching Britain how to eat curry. Both exports happened around the same period, both stuck, and both ended up more beloved in their adopted home than almost anywhere else in the world.

The curry side of that story starts earlier than most people expect. As early as 1733, curry was being served at a coffee house in London's Haymarket, decades before the first purpose-built Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House, opened its doors in 1810. Cricket's spread through the British Empire followed a similar path a little later, carried by the same trading networks and the same colonial administrators who were busy discovering that curry, as one satirical Victorian novelist put it, was rather more exciting than anything on the standard British table.

Two centuries on, both traditions have settled into something that feels entirely native to Britain. A curry on a Friday night and a cricket score checked on a Saturday afternoon are both, in their own way, as British as they are Indian. Glasgow gets both in full.

So what's actually happening this summer

Here's where it's worth being precise, because the cricket calendar this year is more interesting than a straightforward Test series. India's men's team is on a white-ball-only tour of England this July, meaning five Twenty20 internationals followed by three One Day Internationals, with no men's Test cricket involved at all. England won the T20I leg 4-0, a genuinely rare result against India, before the sides moved on to the ODIs. India hit back hard in the 50-over format, beating England by six wickets at Edgbaston to hand England their first ODI defeat at that ground in over a decade. As it stands, India lead the three-match ODI series 1-0, with the second match in Cardiff and the decider at Lord's on 19 July.

There was a genuine Test match in the mix this summer, though, and it is arguably the bigger story. England Women hosted India Women in a landmark fixture at Lord's from 10 to 13 July, the first women's Test ever played at the ground, a fixture more than a century in the making. On the men's side, England's actual Test summer is built around New Zealand in June and a three-match series against Pakistan in August and September, with the men's white-ball leg against India sitting neatly between the two. It is a packed, format-hopping summer of cricket rather than one single occasion, which if anything gives Glasgow more reasons to keep half an eye on a screen through July and into September.

Glasgow's own cricket season

None of this is happening on Glasgow's doorstep this year, but the city has genuine cricketing history with India, and it runs deeper than most guests would guess. Titwood in Pollokshields, home of Clydesdale Cricket Club since the 1870s, is one of only four grounds in Scotland approved by the ICC to host One Day Internationals. In August 2007, Titwood hosted Scotland versus India, a full full-list international played on a cricket ground a short taxi ride from where Madras Cafe now sits on Stockwell Street.

Glasgow's other great cricketing address, Hamilton Crescent in Partick, home to West of Scotland Cricket Club since 1862, has hosted touring sides from Australia, Pakistan and the West Indies over the years, and even had Rahul Dravid turn out as a guest professional for Scotland against Pakistan in 2003. Glasgow, in other words, is not a city on the edge of the cricket world. It has quietly been part of it for well over 150 years.

The food that goes with the occasion

Whatever's on the screen, the food side of a cricket evening in Britain barely needs explaining. A plate of something hot and crisp, a cold beer, and a few hours where nobody minds if you talk through the whole thing. The pakoda is practically built for this. Ours has been fried in Britain and India in more or less the same form for centuries, with references to early versions turning up in Sanskrit and Tamil texts written over a thousand years ago. It's the dish people order without thinking, the way a bowl of crisps appears at half time, except considerably better.

The drink alongside it tends to be just as automatic. Kingfisher has been the default pairing with Indian food in Britain for decades, and there's a reason it works so consistently well with a spice-forward menu: it resets the palate rather than competing with it, which matters just as much three hours into a One Day International as it does over a Friday night curry.

Watching the series, Glasgow style

You don't need Lord's or Edgbaston to make the most of an India series. Check the score, order in or book a table, and let the menu do the rest of the work. A Chicken Chettinad and a cold Kingfisher will outlast most rain delays. And if the series does go to a decider at Lord's on the 19th, there are worse ways to watch it than with a plate of pakoda in front of you.

Book a table at Madras Cafe and make an evening of it, whoever's winning.