One comment appears with remarkable regularity whenever migration, multiculturalism or Indian-Australians are discussed online. The argument goes something like this: if people of Indian heritage support India when cricket is being played, they can never really be Australian.
It is usually presented as common sense, a simple test of loyalty that settles the debate. Yet the claim is neither new nor particularly convincing. It has a long history, it applies standards to some Australians that are rarely applied to others, and it misunderstands how identity works in a modern multicultural nation. Given how often this argument continues to surface, it is worth examining where it came from and whether it stands up to scrutiny.
The idea has a name and a history. In 1990 the British politician Norman Tebbit proposed what became known as the cricket test, the suggestion that migrants who did not cheer for England were not really British. The idea attracted widespread criticism because it treated sporting allegiance as a measure of national loyalty. Three decades on, the same test has washed up on Australian shores, pointed now at the country’s fastest-growing migrant community. The framing has not improved with age.
Start with the simple logic, because it collapses quickly. Sporting allegiance is about identity and joy, not citizenship. Plenty of Australians born and raised here rise before dawn to scream for Liverpool or Manchester United, fill pubs for the English Premier League, and barrack for Greece, Italy, Croatia or Lebanon when the football comes around. Nobody questions their tax residency or their right to a passport because of it. Holding a soft spot for an old team has never been treason for anyone else, and it is not treason now. To turn it into a loyalty exam for one community, and one community only, is not a principle. It is a double standard wearing the costume of one.
Then look at the numbers, because they tell a story the cricket crowd cannot. As of June 2025, there were 971,020 people in Australia who were born in India, now the single largest overseas-born group in the country for the first time on record, ahead of England and China. In 2024-25 alone, 165,193 people became Australian citizens by conferral, and Indians have sat at or near the top of that list for years, ranking first in most states and territories. Becoming a citizen is not a passive thing that happens to you. It is a deliberate act. You wait years, you pass a test, you stand in a hall and you pledge loyalty to this country and its people out loud, in front of witnesses. Hundreds of thousands of Indian-Australians have chosen to do exactly that. Weigh that against a few hours in a stadium and the comparison is almost embarrassing.
And this is where the cricket test really falls apart, because looks deceive. Those packed stands at an India versus Australia match, the sea of blue held up as proof, are not what they appear. A fixture between these two nations is now one of the hottest tickets in world sport, and the crowd is a mix you cannot read from the outside. International students here for a few years, permanent residents still finding their feet, and a large share of fans who fly in from India for the occasion, the same way the Barmy Army crosses the world for the Ashes, all sit shoulder to shoulder. For a student or a visitor to cheer for India is the most natural thing in the world and nobody’s business but their own. The point is that you cannot glance at that stadium and sort the citizen from the student from the holidaymaker. You certainly cannot read off it the loyalty of close to a million settled, working, tax-paying Australians of Indian heritage, the overwhelming majority of whom quietly back the green and gold. A crowd is not a community, a glance is not evidence, and judging a person’s allegiance by the colour of a stadium is exactly the kind of snap verdict that looks can trick you into.
For a student or a visitor to cheer for India is the most natural thing in the world and nobody’s business but their own. The point is that you cannot glance at that stadium and sort the citizen from the student from the holidaymaker. You certainly cannot read off it the loyalty of close to a million settled
And here is the part the cricket test conveniently ignores. Indian-Australians are not only in the stands. They are on the field, in the Baggy Green. Gurinder Sandhu, born in Blacktown to a family from Punjab, became the first male cricketer of Indian heritage to play for Australia when he debuted against India at the MCG in 2015. Tanveer Sangha, a leg-spinner whose parents moved from Punjab to Sydney in 1997, has bowled for Australia in one-day and Twenty20 cricket. Jason Sangha, born in Randwick, captained Australia’s under-19 side and once stood second only to Sachin Tendulkar as the youngest to make a particular first-class hundred. These are not curiosities. They are the leading edge of something much bigger.
Walk into any suburban net session in Melbourne’s south-east and west, in western Sydney, in Brisbane’s growth corridors, and you will find thousands of kids with Indian surnames bowling until dark. Ask them what they want and the answer is not a place in India’s middle order. It is the Baggy Green. It is to open the batting at the MCG on Boxing Day for Australia. That dream is being chased in driveways and on concrete pitches across the country right now, by children whose parents arrived with two suitcases. To wave away their loyalty because of which team an uncle barracked for is to take something real from them and replace it with a slur.
Walk into any suburban net session in Melbourne’s south-east and west, in western Sydney, in Brisbane’s growth corridors, and you will find thousands of kids with Indian surnames bowling and batting until dark. Ask them what they want and the answer is not a place in India’s middle order. It is the Baggy Green
Loyalty, in any case, is shown in far more serious places than a scoreboard. It is shown in the Indian-Australian doctors and nurses who held wards together through the pandemic, in the aged-care and disability workers, the engineers, the small-business owners, the bus drivers and the IT workers who keep the country running. It is shown by those who serve in uniform. None of this depends on who you clap for in a Twenty20 match, and none of it is diminished by it.
There is no contradiction to resolve here, only a false one to retire. You can love the country of your grandparents and be wholly loyal to the country of your children. Italian-Australians manage it. Greek-Australians manage it. English-Australians who still sing for the old country at the football manage it. Indian-Australians manage it too, and they should not have to keep proving a point that is only ever demanded of them.
So when the cricket test comes around again, as it will the next time these two great teams play, it is worth naming it for what it is. Not a measure of belonging, but a refusal to grant it. The disloyalty on display is not in the stands. It is in the question.
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