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New Delhi: The foreign cheerleaders were brought in to entertain India's cricket fans - but not everyone was impressed.
The Delhi Daredevils team said on Wednesday they were switching their cheerleaders for a band of drummers. Mumbai politicians have also forced their cheergirls to cover up, saying their performances were lewd and not appropriate for India's traditional culture.
The cheerleaders were flown in to give a touch of glamour to the Indian Premier League - that brings together the sport's biggest international stars, million-dollar contracts, big business and celebrities.
The league has been posited as a celebration of the new India: brash, confident, cosmopolitan and rolling in money from a decade-long economic boom.
Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya flew in the Washington Redskins American football team's cheerleaders to boost his team, which he named - the Bangalore Royal Challengers. Other team owners flew in troops of dancing beauties from Eastern Europe.
For a brief moment, all was good. They whirled and bounced and cheered. Miniskirts flared and pompoms shook as cricket players batted balls out of the park.
Too much
But it was all too much for the other India - a deeply conservative country where public displays of sexuality are taboo and women are expected to dress modestly.
The backlash began in Mumbai last week when lawmakers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party pressed to get cheerleaders banned from the home games of the local team, the Mumbai Indians.
"See the pictures of these girls in the newspapers? This is not something you can allow inside your house, or something that you can look at in the presence of your sister or daughter," said Nitin Gadkari, the Bharatiya Janata Party's president for the state of Maharashtra.
"It may be a good thing for America, for the USA, it's not a good thing for India, for our kind of culture," Gadkari said.
In the end a compromise of sorts was reached.
The away team cheerleaders still wore their tartan miniskirts, but they donned black full-body stockings underneath. The Mumbai dancers wore ankle-length blue pants.
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