Cricket Country

When I picked up "The Boundless Sea", I looked at the other titles nominated for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize and Prashant Kidambi's "Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire" caught my eye. It has been a couple of decades since I have followed International Cricket (and most organized sports for that matter), but my husband's mid-life crisis has him on a personal cricket journey, and as a co-traveler in his life, I am on the periphery of that journey. I thought this book might intrigue him and might actually force him to pick up a book for a change. The odds are pretty low, but one can still hope. 

I am of the firm belief that two people's interests don't have to match for a long term, successful relationship as long as there is mutual respect, so I wasn't bothered when we first met more than two decades back that none of our interests aligned except, back then I too followed sports though not sporty myself. But the day we were getting ready for our plane ride back to the US from India after our wedding, I was happy to note he packed a book for the flight, albeit a technical book called "Real Analysis." It is a 20+ hour flight from India to the US and he spent a sum total of 2 mins on the book before he decided to take a nap! Since then, this scene has been repeated innumerable times in the 22 years of our marriage and the countless long distance trips we've made.  "Real analysis" has accompanied us all the time but the bookmark hasn't moved beyond the first few pages. It is now a token of luck that we carry with us, one that we all know is a mere token and will never be read. Will "Cricket Country" fare any better? I don't know, but at least I enjoyed the book more as a history buff. 

Cricket is perhaps the most long lasting colonial legacy that the British left and as Edward Said reminds us, the Empire Strikes back. The game now is more Indian than British that Ashish Nandy's pithy saying "Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British" rings true for modern India. But back in 1911 when the first All-India team was assembled to tour England, no one could have anticipated what would come in the years after Indian independence in 1947. Prashant Kidambi's focus is on this particular tour but the actual tour starts in his book only around page 250. The preceding pages detail the first Parsee tour of England back in 1888 and the development of native cricket in Bombay spearheaded by the Parsee community. As with many things in India, cricket back then was also a communal activity and soon enough there were Hindu Cricket Clubs, Muslim clubs all playing cricket sometimes against each other and sometimes against the colonizer. In those days, cricket was seen as a way of uniting the ruler and the ruled and an All-India tour would promote unity among the people of India, give them a proper education about how the game is played in the mothership, and also promote the civilizing mission of Imperial Britain. Kidambi gives us a profile of the 1911 team which eventually comprised of Parsees, Hindu Brahmins, Muslims and two Dalits (the Palwankar brothers, Baloo and Shivram) all led by the Maharaja of Patiala Bhupinder Singh who accepted the position to create a favorable impression with his British minders. 

1911 was an interesting year in Britain with the coronation of King George V and it was the pinnacle of Imperialism. In addition to the cricketers from India, there were also a team of wrestlers, an Indian strongman, a racket champion (precursor to squash) all in Britain at the same time. Kidambi gives us memorable stories about these people too which truly deserve a book of their own. The cricket team performed dismally against first class cricket clubs, fared better against lesser teams and had some success in Scotland and Ireland.The team was inexperienced, was a conglomeration of individuals who had not played together as a team, were in a very different environment, were on a brutal schedule with no more than 2 days of rest between games, and were deserted by their Captain and one of their star players mid-way through the tour. The Palwankar brothers, especially Baloo distinguished himself as a bowler of great merit and his brother saved the Indian team a couple of times with his scintillating batting. Baloo went onto have a successful political career and his life intersects Gandhi and Ambedkar at a later point. Indian cricket history is incomplete without mentioning Ranjit Singh. Being singularly gifted as a cricketer, his only contribution to Indian cricket is to help break the stereotype that the game cannot be played by natives. Other than that he appeared to be just a savvy political operator who was looking out for himself. The book is full of interesting facts that I've been spouting to my husband in the hope he will be interested enough to pick it up. For e.g. the 1911 Indian team possessed fairly outdated technical knowledge that they experienced the googly for the first time, and that the Yorker was probably invented by an American from Philadelphia called John Barton King.

The book was a fun and fast read and made me relive some of my childhood memories. I was 9 when India won the World Cup cricket for the first time and four years later India hosted the World Cup! The evening before the start of the matches our old television broke down. I don't think we've made a faster purchase decision than buying a color television the night before the 1987 world cup. My dad, my brother and I were in Vivek & Co picking out our TV and asked for same day delivery. The funny part was the delivery truck had only one stop that night - our home, so the driver asked us if we wanted a ride back in the truck and there we were - the 3 of us and our TV in a Vivek & Co delivery truck making sure we had a fully functioning TV for the world cup. Needless to say, my dad was a huge fan and one of the items in his possession was a letter from the great England Keeper, Alan Knott, which on his passing is now a treasured artifact for my husband. Playing in a local cricket league has been one of the best things that happened to my husband and he also has a fabulous coach who does more than teach just cricket, someone who emphasizes the process instead of the outcomes. So while he might never pick up the book, I am genuinely happy he has picked up the bat and as his coach seems bent on teaching an old dog new tricks, I am happy to see him enjoy the game not just as a spectator. To that the 1911 All-India team has my thanks!