Nike’s latest campaign celebrates national and emerging cricket talent

The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup is about to begin, starting tomorrow, that is, February 7. In a country where a game and the players are worshipped like gods, brands might find it difficult to create a campaign that taps the deep emotions of the fans, keeping the brand narrative in place.

In India, a campaign for cricket and cricketers can be a ‘made it’ or ‘it’s over’ moment. The sports fans don’t just consume content; they actively engage with the brands that support their beloved games.

Reaching a global or local audience effectively, advertisers are expected to think beyond the standard marketing textbook for OOH, digital, social media, or other marketing media.

When a brand steps into this space, it enters a relationship that has been decades in the making, one between a nation and the game that runs through its streets, its conversations, its collective memory.

Nike chose the beginning of the Men's T20 World Cup to launch ‘Born to Beat the Odds,’ a campaign that appeared across Mumbai just as the tournament was about to begin.

The approach was different. Instead of the usual anthem of victory, Nike looked at what comes before: the doubt, the pressure, the statistical improbability of making it.

The campaign did not try to manufacture emotion. It is named something that already existed: the feeling of being one person among 1.4 billion, trying to believe you might be the next one.

Because usual campaigns can be ineffective in a country like India. The numbers tell part of the story. According to Nielsen, 66.1% of people in India are cricket fans, the highest rate among surveyed countries. When these consumers feel connected to a sport, they remember who stood beside it. When price and quality are similar, they choose the brand that shows up. They remember when something feels hollow or borrowed.

The campaign placed near-40-feet-tall installations across Mumbai. The faces looking down were both expected and surprising: Shubman Gill, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shreyas Iyer, Tilak Varma, Shafali Verma. Established names, yes. But also young academy players and elementary school athletes, Zaina Ahmed Baig, Ishan Deshpande, Debark Maity, Ramra Chaudhary.

One of the installations featured three-year-old Debark Maity, whose batting videos had already moved through the internet, watched by the internet audience.

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A post shared by cricket king Debark (@cricketkingdebark)

This is where Nike chose what story to tell. Not the story of arrival, but the story of the gap between dreaming and becoming. Not the celebration of those who made it, but the acknowledgment of everyone still trying.

Harsha Bhogle provided the voiceover. For anyone who has listened to cricket in India, his voice carries weight. It has been there during victories and defeats, during moments when everything changed and moments when nothing did.

His presence in the campaign was not a decoration. It was a signal that Nike aimed to understand what this sport means here.

The anthem film, ‘The Odds,’ did not try to inspire through spectacle alone. It spoke to the weight young athletes carry.

The campaign will continue throughout the tournament, with new installations appearing at different Mumbai locations and new films dropping as the matches progress. The structure aims to allow the brand to remain present without repeating itself, to evolve the message as the tournament unfolds.

But the foundation was set in that first choice, to make the campaign about more than the game itself. To make it about the person watching, the child playing in the gully, the academy player hoping this might be the year everything changes.

Cricket fans in India have seen countless campaigns. They know when a brand is trying to borrow emotion rather than speak to what already exists. They know the difference between a message designed in a boardroom far away and one that understands what it feels like to want something this badly in a country of this many people.

Nike went local not by using local language or local colours, but by understanding the specific pressure that exists here, the weight of potential, the mathematics of improbability, the resilience required to keep believing anyway.

The campaign does not promise victory. It acknowledges the odds. And in a country where millions know exactly what those odds feel like, that acknowledgment might matter more than any promise could.