At their most philosophical, the British saw empire as cricket. For some, cricket was the greatest gift imperialism could bestow, because it could transform ‘natives’ into gentlemen. In 1893 this ‘wicket imperialism’ acquired its most prominent theorist in the shape of Arthur Haslam, Oxford historian and wicket-keeper for the ‘Oxford Eccentrics’, the first British team to tour India. Cricket’s rules and culture, he insisted, were the platonic embodiment of English virtue:
First the hunter, the missionary and the merchant, next the soldier and the politician and then the cricketer – that is the history of British colonization. . . the soldier may hector, the politician blunder, but cricket united . . . the ruler and the ruled. It also provides a moral training, an education in pluck and nerve, and self-restraint, far more valuable to the character of the native than the mere learning by heart of a play by Shakespeare or an essay by Macaulay.
For others, cricket could build not merely character but the nation itself, though there was profound disagreement about the nature of the ‘nation’ being constructed. For Lord Harris, the cricket-loving governor of Bombay from 1890 to 1893, it encouraged the multi-farious castes, communities and religious of India to mingle while retaining their separate identities – an ideal displacement of potentially explosive political rivalries. Those of a more progressive temper than Harris saw it differently. For Sir Lancelot Graham, the first governor of Sindh, cricket was capable of dissolving such divisions to ‘bind communities together and foster harmony on and off the field, and not only in cricket’. For a while, at least, it appeared that Graham’s optimistic view might be vindicated.
Before the First World War cricket did indeed appear to be the cultural glue of an emerging national identity. By 1918 cricket had become a national obsession, played throughout the country, uniting rich and poor, high caste and low, Hindu and Muslim. The great tournaments were kaleidoscopic spectacles: the well-off inside the stadiums in tents and on divans, the less prosperous straining for a view of the pitch from the tops of trees, buses and telegraph poles. There were even signs of integration on the pitch with multi-caste teams and princes playing with paupers. Indeed the greatest stars of the pre-1914 game came from opposite ends of the social spectrum. The outstanding batsman was Kumar Shri Ranjitsinji, Jamsaheb (prince) of Nawanagar (1872–1933). Having taken up cricket at Rajkumar College, the princes’ Eton, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he acquired the nickname Smith and a parrot called Popsey, and joined the University team in 1893. He went on to play for England against Australia in 1896, making three centuries in a style characterized by enraptured observers as ‘an oriental poem of action’. The other great pre-war star was the fabulously gifted bowler Baloo, an untouchable, who had honed his spinning as a practice bowler to British officers in the military encampment where his father worked as a camp orderly. Initially, he was not allowed to take tea with other team members but had his served outside the pavilion in a disposable cup. Triumphing over caste prejudice, however, he eventually captained the predominantly high-caste team that sensationally beat the Europeans in 1923.
However, Indian cricket soon came to embody not caste, class and religious unity, but division. This development is best encapsulated in the strange history of the greatest tournament of colonial India: the Bombay Pentangular. Bombay had been the birthplace of cricket for Indians. A proto-tournament had been initiated by Harris in 1893, with teams assembled along racial and community lines. Initially the Parsi team had haughtily declined to play the Hindus: only European opponents were equal to their dignity. But by 1907 the rift between Hindus and Parsis was healed and the first Bombay Triangular, between Hindus, Parsis and Europeans, was held. In 1912 a Muslim team joined, and thus the Quadrangular began. By the early 1930s the tournament was beginning to mirror national politics; the various teams roughly reflected the disposition of forces at the Round Table constitutional talks held at the time – Europeans, Hindus and Sikhs, Parsis and Muslims. In 1932 matches had to be cancelled owing to Congress’s boycott of the constitutional talks. By the mid-1930s the question of how the ‘minor’ minorities should be incorporated into the game arose, just as their place in a reformed constitution was vexing talks in London. In cricketing terms the question was how the smaller communities of Indian Catholics, Protestants, Syrian Christians, Eurasians, Sinhalese, Buddhists, Luso-Portugese Indians and Jews might participate in the game. The solution came in 1937 with the formation of a fifth team, known as ‘the Rest’, and the first Bombay Pentangular was born.
The ethnicization of the game naturally led to conflict. The first Pentangular of 1937 proved something of a fiasco. The Hindus withdrew because they had not been allocated enough seats in the new stadium; the Parsis boycotted it in 1938, only to return in 1939, when the Pentangular commenced in earnest. By 1940, however, political tensions were again disrupting play: the Hindus decided they should withdraw in solidarity with Congress’s resignation from government after the declaration of war. The tournament was not held in 1942 owing to the Japanese triumphs in south-east Asia, but was back in 1943, when the British had great hopes of winning with a team boosted by new infusions of talent from the swollen ranks of British servicemen (they were defeated in the first round). The last Pentangular was held in January 1946.
~~Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India since the Great Rebellion -by- Maria Misra
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