Amish You spends all his annual leaves following the Indian cricket team around the world. “This is probably why I am still single,” he laughs. The 32-year-old from London is a member of The Bharat Army — a global group of cricket lovers and fans that travels to every country where Team India plays and cheers them on. He, along with the rest of the group, is in India for the duration of the ongoing 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.
“We call ourselves the 12th man of the Indian team,” says Rakesh Patel, who started The Bharat Army in the UK during the 1999 World Cup, with the idea that every cricket team should have a supporters group. “We are among the most passionate fans in the world. Cricket is a religion in our country and we needed to do something more organised as a group,” he says. The group started with four members and over the last 23 years has grown to include 1,60,000 registered members and 1.7 million followers globally.
