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The Cream Revolution

Cricket exemplifies an amity otherwise missing in the nation

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The Cream Revolution
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This and other such combinations performed well enough against English teams abroad (1911) and at home (1926-27) to gain credit with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Fifteen years before India became an independent country again, its national team played against England at Lord’s in 1932, to be followed by similar contests during 1933-34 in Mumbai, Kolikata and Chennai. These cities answered to different names then, so did the Indian team. The eleven was nominated ‘All-India’ for reasons never clearly stated by whoever gave the name.

Even the team which toured England in 1946 was dubbed ‘All-India’. From what or where did this allness derive as far as the country’s cricket was concerned? Was it a composite of the Pentangular tournament, that highly successful ‘panchsheel’ of Indian cricket which, in its fully evolved form, pitted against each other teams representing Hindus, Muslims, Parsees, Europeans and The Rest? That can’t be the answer because the self-styled Europeans of India (mainly Brits, Scots and the Irish, perhaps a few Welshmen as well; hardly any French or Germans, Danes or Italians) resolutely used this category to keep themselves apart from Indians outside working hours. They couldn’t really have aspired to wear India colours; for that matter, not many were able enough to win them on merit alone. The one and only time an Indian team was heavily represented by Europeans was in the second unofficial "Test" against A.E.R. Gilligan’s team at Calcutta beginning on December 31, 1926. Seven Europeans and four Indians (C.K. Nayudu and R.J. Jamshedji, Wazir Ali and Nazir Ali) made up the eleven which lost this match. Yet, at an earlier "Test" that same month in Mumbai, an Indian-only team had easily held its own against the visitors.

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To go back to the Pentangular for a while, it became a five-contestant tournament only in 1937. Held always in the then city of Bombay, from being a Triangular (among Europeans, Parsees and Hindus) contest in 1907, it became a Quadrangular when Muslims joined in 1912, and remained so until 1937 when several communities got together to put up a team expansively called The Rest. How expansive that description was can be gauged from the fact that for a couple of years, two brilliant Ceylonese batsmen, S.S. Jayawickreme and M.V. Sathasivan, played for The Rest.They may also have appeared because the Inter-university Board then was one which embraced India, Burma and Ceylon. On form, one or both of them could have been selected for an India eleven. The allness of Indian cricket thus crossed the Palk Straits. But the question of any batsman or bowler from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) being invited to play for the All-India team somehow never arose.

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A much-forgotten aspect of the Pentangular is what started as an inter-racial contest (Europeans vs Parsees or Europeans vs Hindus or simply Gora vs Kaala, even if many Parsees were as fair-skinned as the Europeans) was transformed by ever-increasing native Indian participation into an inter-community tournament. In his History of Indian Cricket, Ted Docker has quoted a letter-writer of the 1920s to The Times of India who assured, "If ever India is to win communal unity, it will be on her cricket fields..." Certainly, the good example was followed in other parts of the then India, sometimes as inter-community matches (as at Karachi, Aligarh, Ajmer), sometimes as invitation tournaments (at Delhi, Cooch Behar, Secunderabad). By the 1930s, all of India was getting into the game. Whether that helped to better inter-community relations or not, it certainly improved our cricket.

What it could not do was to reduce our capacity for wrangling. Each time an Indian cricket team was selected to play the official Test matches of 1932, 1933-34 and 1936, some quarrel or the other invariably broke out just as often over who was selected as over who was not. Iftikhar Ali Khan, the first Nawab of Pataudi whose name anybody knows, once wrote in the 1941-42 annual number of that short-lived magazine, Crickina : "Let us imagine for a moment that all branches of our cricket are managed on scientific lines, and that we have a galaxy of talent. We are then confronted with the task of selecting a representative Indian side. How are we to proceed? Are we to follow the 1932 and 1936 style? If we do that, we shall have to try and please each community, each province and association, and we shall also have to please the rich patrons of the game. By the time we please all of them, we shall have succeeded in ruining the team, and we shall then start thinking of the people who will sit on the inquiry committee at the end of the season!"

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Did Iftikhar Ali Khan feel all these compunctions when he accepted the captaincy of the All-India team of 1946 to tour England? He had fallen ill during the 1934 season in England, played practically no first-class cricket there or in India since then, yet allowed himself to be anointed leader of a side most of whose members he probably knew only by name. Certainly, he could not have made much effort to ensure that the best available team was selected. Otherwise, how could the claims of up- and-coming youngsters like D.G. Phadkhar, Fazal Mahmood, Imtiaz Ahmed, as also of established players like H.R. Adhikari and Ghulam Ahmed have been ignored?

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The Pentangular tournament was discontinued in 1945, perhaps out of apprehension about the "communal" feelings it could arouse. Mahatma Gandhi was among those who disapproved of this form of cricket. Already, however, a far more inclusive national tournament had started in 1934 with the Ranji Trophy, donated by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, which "was to be competed for annually by the Provincial Cricket Associations of India". Though originally meant to be an inter-provincial competition, its format left ample room for the entry of other kinds of cricketing combinations. Thus, in the first year of the tournament, teams representing the army (which fielded nine sahibs and two natives), Central India (but also Central Provinces & Berar), Northern India (but also Southern Punjab), Western India (but also Gujarat and Maharashtra) were contestants, apart from the city of Bombay and the kingdom of Hyderabad.Over the years, other combinations (like Delhi & Districts, Rajputana) formed and re-formed, more provincial sides (like those of Bengal and Bihar) joined, as did other state teams like those of Baroda and Nawanagar. In addition to geography-spreading from NWFP to Madras, Gujarat to Orissa-history also stretched to include princely states alongside units of British India. More than by combination of communities, it was this coupling of history with geography that justified the All-India name. Of the 16 members of the 1946 side, seven were drawn from British India, nine from ‘Indian’ India, with the Nawab of Pataudi lending the last touch of royalty to an Indian cricket team. All other rajas and thakores and nawabzadas and rao sahebs since then who have hung around Indian cricket were called so only out of politeness. After some years, they even lost their stipends.

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The community-wise breakdown of the 1946 team was 10 Hindus, four Muslims, one Parsee and one Christian. That it was led by a Muslim was quite without precedent-unless we take into account S. Wazir Ali’s captaining the team in two unofficial "Tests" against Jack Ryder’s team of Australians which toured India in 1935-36. All-India won both these matches convincingly and Wazir Ali may have thought he should be in the running for captaincy of the 1936 team to England. In cold fact, he was used to keep C.K. Nayudu out of the running, even though C.K. had led India in our first-ever Test match (by courtesy of those two fine gentlemen if not great cricketers, H.H. Porbandar and K.S. Limbdi) against England at Lord’s in 1932, and in three Tests that followed in India during 1933-34. Not a two-nation but a three-nation view of Indian nationhood was then being sponsored by the British in India. Other than Hindus and Muslims, the so-called princes were being tutored to inherit if not India, at least Indian cricket.

That must be how M.K. Vizianagram (‘Vizzy’) was smuggled into the team in the only capacity he qualified-not as bowler or fielder or batsman but as captain. Apparently, the selection committee preferred him over Iftikhar Ali Khan! Not for nothing had Vizzy got that shabby structure put up at Ferozshah Kotla and named it the Willingdon Pavilion.

The allness of India was drastically altered by Partition and Indian cricket, Aligarh westwards, lost many Muslim cricketers-some already established in first-class cricket, some about to in the near future-who migrated to Pakistan or chose to stay on there. Among its numerous deprivations and aberrations, however, Pakistan has gained substantially in cricket from what happened in 1947. Within five years, it was able to defeat India in a Test match in India; we have yet to return the compliment though more than 50 years have passed. On its very first tour of England in 1954, Pakistan achieved a Test victory in England; we achieved this only on our eighth tour. On these and many other counts, Pakistan’s record in international cricket is superior to that of India. The most telling proof of this was seen when Kerry Packer’s agents chose several Pakistani cricketers but none from India for his tamasha involving the best players in the world.

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Looking back from 2000, we may wonder whether or not an All-India team on pre-1947 lines would have performed better than India or Pakistan teams have done separately since then. I am not sure it would have. If nothing else, the tradition of selectorial squabbles would have affected player performance.No mater how many good players are available, unless a fair and wise selection committee can choose the best possible eleven, how would Test matches be won? The necessary fairness and wisdom have not always been evident on either side of the border. But, somehow, Pakistan has been able to generate match-winning performances even from unknown and untried players. That is the secret of their success.

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What India has achieved, even after losing the All-India label, is an allness that should serve us well at present and in the future. Despite the predominance of Bombay, then of Delhi, and now of Bangalore, other regions keep making inroads. When a Bengali opens our batting, an Oriya the bowling, with wickets being kept by a Tailangi, the allness of Indian cricket remains secure.

The Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer
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