Indian Cricket: Myth And Reality

Why another history of cricket? The shelves are well stocked with perfectly adequate, and in a few cases more than adequate histories, ranging from the classic solidity of Altham and Swanton to the heretical devices of Roland Bowen, the brilliant impressionism of Cardus' "Cricket" and the admirable concision of Roy Weber."      

—Benny Green, History of Cricket.

"I came to associate cricket in my own boyish and starry-eyed way with all that was good, noble and worthwhile.  Today the game is spoilt, and spoilt rotten. The days of innocence have been gobbled up by sponsors and sodom. All over the cricketing world beastly people have made our time and the game we loved into nothing."  

—Rudrangshu Mukherjee, The Telegraph, 4.11.2000.

Cricket to all its historians has quintessentially been the preserve of "gentlemen".  Reports, surveys and commentaries in recent months have established without a trace of uncertainty that Hansiegate and the stunning discoveries following it climaxing with the CBI report have signed a death warrant to this noble, gentlemanly sport.  It is cricket's hour of shame that compels us to rethink the character of the sport --not just in contemporary society, but in its historical evolution.  Are these "beasts" truly a product of our generation? Was cricket really ever a sport far removed from the vices of politics and commerce?  History tells a different story, and it is important in the present context that we recount a critical yet different trajectory of the game, before we begin to compose the oft familiar jeremiad. 

Corruption and vice in cricket can be traced back to the early 1740s.  S.M Toyne establishes this fact in his The Early History of Cricket.  He writes,

"After the game had become fashionable in the 1740s betting rose to fantastic sums of one thousand pounds or more.  Of one match it has been stated that the side bets among spectators and players totaled twenty thousand pounds.  In the early part of the nineteenth century the game itself was in danger of ruin since it had become the chief medium for national gambling.Bookmakers attended the matches, odds were called as the fortunes of the game fluctuated, and side bets on the score of individual players led to bribery and cheating.  One noted player took hundred pounds to lose a match. Even the Hambledon club was said to have usually staked five hundred pounds on each match."

Toyne chronicles contemporary disappointment at the sad plight of the game.  For instance, one Miss Mitford lamented,

"I anticipated great pleasure from so grand an exhibition.  What a mistake! There they were, a set of ugly old men, white-haired and bald headed. instead of our fine village lads with their unbuttoned collars. which gave an air so picturesque to their glowing bounding youthfulness, their they stood railed in by themselves, silent, solemn, slow-playing for money, making a business of the thing,. a sort of dance without music instead of the glee, the fun, the shouts, the laughter, the glorious confusion of the country game, but everything is spoilt when money puts its stupid nose in.. so be it always when men make the noble game of cricket an affair of betting and hedgings and maybe cheatings."

So, match-fixing, which appears in recent writings to be a young teenaged lad is in reality one of the oldest surviving 'gentlemen'.  This phenomenon was not restricted to the subcontinent, but was a global affliction initially making its appearance in the very country that gave birth to the game.

One of the central characters of cricket's romantic lore is W.G.Grace, hailed as the father of cricket. A man for whom the laws of cricket were moulded, whose personality generated the largest number of cricketing anecdotes and is idealized as the epitome of a virtuous generation.  While these myths around Grace are the stuff of a cricket fan's nostalgia, the reality could leave him/her shell shocked.  WG was the best-known gentleman cricketer.  Definitionally, the latter phrase refers to an amateur athlete comfortable enough not to accept money to play.  WG however, received three thousand pounds as his fee during the 1893 tour to Australia, not an exceptional feat in his long forty-four year career.  In an age where a number of outstanding amateurs were forced to shorten their cricketing careers in favor of more lucrative pursuits, any attempt by Grace's followers to exonerate their hero from the charge of deceit is unacceptable.  This provokes Simon Rae to write in Grace's latest biography, W.G.Grace - A Life, "Though often depicted as an overgrown schoolboy, WG was extremely shrewd and ruthlessly exploited the power his immense popularity gave him.  A notorious "shamateur" he amassed great wealth through cricket while remaining the standard bearer for the gentleman against the players for forty years."

II

In the Indian context, which is more relevant for our purposes in the light of recent happenings, cricket
history rests on certain established fables.  Most important of these is the notion that sport in general and cricket in particular is a leisure pursuit. Belonging to the sphere of entertainment, Indian cricket has been idealized as apolitical and genteel. These notions are not only based upon impractical romanticism, but also attest to an ignorance of truth.Relatedly, other notable myths about Indian cricket, that require urgent debunking are that in 1886 the Parsis were the first Indians to participate in international cricket against England; the Harris Shield is the oldest cricket tournament in the country and the earliest instance of caste regulations being flouted in the game was in the 1890s when an untouchable cricketer P.Baloo was allowed to play for the Hindus in Poona.

According to eminent cricket historian Ram Chandra Guha, "In the 1830s Parsi boys began imitating white soldiers, improvising the implements of cricket by using hats as wickets, umbrellas as bats, and old leather stuffed with rags and sewn up, as balls. In 1848 these boys (now men) established the OrientalCricket Club. At least thirty Parsi Clubs were formed in the 1850s and 1860s. They were named for British viceroys and statesmen and for Roman Gods: Gladstone, Elgin, Ripon, Jupiter and Mars."

The reason behind this early patronage of cricket by the Parsis, an educated, prosperous and westernized community according to Mankasji Kavasji Patel, an early observer of Parsi cricket, was the desire of the newly emerging Parsi bourgeoisie to strengthen ties with the rulers.  Parsi intellectuals also welcomed cricketing prowess as a sign of renewed physical vitality of the race sapped by centuries in tropical climes. What stimulated the Parsi initiative, according to existing historiography, was the community's possession of capital, western education and an urge for social mobility within the colonial framework. All these factors, it may be noted, were also present among the Bengali bhadrolok of the early nineteenth century. But they did not take to cricket until the 1870s and 1880s, despite the existence of a well established, white cricketing fraternity in Bengal since the early years of the nineteenth century. Hence the explanation that emulation of the whites was at the genesis of cricket in India fails to successfully account for the factors behind the early development of the game in this country.  This caveat is a product of the sport historian's inablity to engage with the politics behind the game, treating leisure at a superficial and sanitized level, above and beyond politics.

In Bengal, until the mid-nineteenth century, cricket was looked upon as an exclusively European preserve, while indigenous sports like wrestling were confined to the lower classes. It was around this time in the 1830s that T.B. Maculay, Law member for India gave the following description of Bengalees: "Whatever the Bengali does he does languidly, his favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exhaustion. seldom engages in personal conflict and scarcely even enlists as a soldier". For Macaulay such feebleness had important implications for the moral character of the inhabitants of Bengal. This is evident when Macaulay states,  "the physical organization of the Bengali is feeble even to effeminacy. Courage, independence, veracity are qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally unfavourable."

In this context it became imperative on the part of the educated Bengali middle class to devise an effective strategy to counter the colonial charge of effeminacy. There were certain constraints upon their conduct, for such strategizing had to be conducted within a colonized society where the physical expression of such actions would be severely suppressed.  Sports became the arena where, from the 1870s and 1880s, this heavily politicized but veiled strategizing took place. It was felt that mastery in manly (manly by European standards) sports, like cricket and football, would be the reply to the colonial charge of effeminacy. This veiled political motive lay at the root of the flourishing of these sports in Bengal in the late nineteenth century.

Several cricket clubs were formed during this period.  The Boys club was the first regular club formed in 1880, followed by the Wellington club in 1881, the Howrah Sporting club and the Town club in 1884.  The records of the Mohun Bagan club indicate that towards the close of the nineteenth century the club had regular fixtures against teams like Town, Aryans, Kumartuli, B.E. College Shibpur and the Calcutta Medical College.

In 1884, a Sri Lankan team visited Bengal giving Indians the first taste of international cricket. This was followed in 1885 by an Australian side playing against a Bengali side at the Eden Gardens in a match that eventually ended in a draw.  This match was witnessed among others by the Prince of Wales, Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjea, Shelly Banerjee and a large number of Congressmen present in Calcutta to attend the second session of the Indian National Congress.  School and college cricket too had been firmly established by this time and the first inter school cricket tournament in the country, the Harrisson Shield was started in 1887 in Calcutta, six years before the Harris Shield of Bombay.

Bengali cricket patrons of this period also epitomized the dual critique of caste and class undertaken in the arena of sport.  These patrons from orthodox Hindu families ignored all caste prejudices as they established a number of sporting clubs.  That they faced stiff resistance is evident from an incident surrounding the induction of a potter's son into the Wellington club.  This attempt provoked a strong protest from some of the richer members of the club. But the president Nagendraprasad Sarbadhikary refused to buckle before the pressure arguing that a sporting club was beyond any prejudice and decided to dismantle the Wellington club, replacing it with the Sovabazar sporting club.  Moni Das, the son of the potter whose presence was the cause behind the Wellington club's closure was one of the first members of the Sovabazar club.  He later distinguished himself as one of the best cricketers of Mohun Bagan club.  This attempt by Nagendraprasad to free sports of all caste prejudice in the 1880s was one of the earliest examples of a crusade against untouchability.

This flurry of cricketing activity in Bengal effectively explodes the myth surrounding the birth of Indian cricket in Bombay.  Simultaneously, these facts relegated to the dusty shelves of newspaper archives, throw light on the ways in which politics and commerce were inextricably linked to sport.  It was the Bengali failure to conceive of sport as industry, weave together the idea of entertainment as commerce, so successfully accomplished in Bombay, that has led to the erasure of Bengal's cricketing heritage for posterity and perpetuated a number of false impressions about the game in India.

The eclipse of Bengal by Bombay due to effective strategizing with market forces and politics will be clearer if we take a look at the evolution and development of the Bombay Pentangular into the most popular cricket tournament in India.  This tournament is the central object of many historical analyses and is hailed by commentators as the earliest "Test matches" of India where "the 'fight for the ashes' are as keenly contested ..as those between England and Australia." (J.M. Framjee Patel, Stray Thoughts on Indian Cricket).

The Bombay Pentangular had its inception in the Presidency matches of the 1890s, played between the Europeans and the Parsis.  In Bengal, matches between the Calcutta cricket club, an exclusively European team and the Town club a Bengali team predated such matches.  Yet while the latter was limited to the club level, the Presidency matches expanded into the Pentangular with the inclusion of Hindus, Muslims and the "Rest".  The successful commercialization of the Quadrangular/Pentangular, dating back to the second decade of the twentieth century, had the twofold effect of making this tournament the leading cricket extravaganza in the country.  At the same time it made the Bombay Cricket Association, its organizers, an object of envy for other cricket associations including the Board of Cricket Control.

The situation came to a head in 1934 with the start of the Ranji Trophy.  The BCCI did its utmost to sabotage the Pentangular, since it attracted much larger crowds than the Ranji matches, causing huge losses for the Board. Radio commentary for the Pentangular was stopped, and players employed by the Maharajas faced the threat of losing their jobs if they continued to play in these matches.  Furthermore, the Pentangular was defamed as a "communal" tournament, fostering Hindu-Muslim tensions.  Even the Mahatma on December 7, 1940, made a statement to this effect in the Bombay Chronicle, a fact that has been made much of in the annals of Indian cricket.  Ironically, what gets excluded in historical analyses of the Mahatma's statement is that he followed his exhortation against the "communal" Pentangular with the honest admission that he knew little about cricket and his statement was based on reports received from a select delegation of the Hindu Gymkhana.  We could ask why the Bombay Pentangular had been singled out as a recipient of the Board's ideological wrath, when similar "communal" tournaments continued to be played in Sindh and Lucknow?  Clearly the motivations of the Board were couched in the politically correct idiom of secularism, when its actions were actually rooted in deep-seated financial considerations.

The Pentangular is not the only event in Indian cricket history that reeks of rampant politicking. The strong arm of the Maharajas is palpable in the 1936 tour of England when the best player Lala Amarnath was forced to return on grounds of  "indiscipline".  Talented players like Shute Banerjee were deprived of a Test berth as he refused to abuse C.K.Nayadu at the breakfast table, in defiance of an order from the Captain, the Maharaja of Vizianagram. Baqa Jilani, who carried out the order, earned for himself a maiden Test cap.

III

Against such a history, the CBI's comment that cricket as it is played now is not the game written about by Neville Cardus or played by Don Bradman, sounds extremely naïve. Also denunciating globalization as the agent of cricket's corruption is missing the trees for the woods.  Economic liberalization is a global trend, and to expect that cricket would be immune to it is a facile assumption.  Rather, if cricket manages to shun its feudal codes and become truly professional -- the forces of globalization are expected to steer the game along that path -- its codes will be clarified and so will be the punishments for breaching them.  There are some redeeming features to the CBI report.  First the publication of this one hundred and sixty two pages long report testifies to the strength of character of the central government, despite the fact that it has dragged its foot on many issues. Second, this was done against the odds of certain cricketers playing the minority card and boasting political connections in the BJP led coalition. The CBI report bespeaks of a commitment to stamp out corruption from the game in a manner hitherto unknown. We must recall that if the MCC managed to purge similar cankers from cricket two hundred years ago, there is no reason to lose hope that the present day administrators should be able to follow that precedent if their efforts are honest and rigorous.

Neither should we assume that the match fixing scandal is an isolated occurrence.  The global history of sport, especially of games that arouse primal passion among audiences and therefore succeed in attracting huge corporate sponsors, is full of such instances. 

 And none of the scandals have ever threatened the existence of the game in the manner suggested by some Indian commentators.  The match fixing episodes leading upto the 1919 Black Sox scandal in US baseball offers a striking parallel to the cricket controversy.  A brief look at the  commonalties between the two events should give hope to Indian cricket enthusiasts that the reputation of the game is not beyond redemption. In 1919 the allegations against the Black Sox accused were based on circumstantial evidence, much like the accusations of match fixing against some Indian and international players. The baseball accused were freed by the judgement of August 2, 1921 due to lack of evidence. But the next day Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landes incharge of investigations unilaterally suspended the eight suspects including the legendary "shoeless Joe Jackson".  The United States of America, in 1919 was emerging as a capitalist power, in the same way as India today. The forces of the market and capital made their impact on  most US sports, baseball being a prime example.  Yet Landes managed to purge the lesions affecting baseball, despite the huge odds against him.  His efforts have earned him a place in baseball's Hall of Fame.  Only the future will show us which official in the Ministry of Sports, or in the cricket administration achieves such a feat in our country.

Boria Majumdar, a sports historian who lives and dreams cricket, is working for his Phd on the Social History of Indian Cricket, on a Rhodes scholarship at St.John's College Oxford. He's also a freelance editorial/features writer for the Anandabazar Patrika, Times of India, Kolkata and The Statesman. This essay, adjudged third in the Outlook-Picador-India Non-Fiction Competition, he says, is dedicated to his recently lost father, a person who always supported his attempt to bring cricket within the academic realm. He hopes to demonstrate, in the course of his research, that our understanding of Indian history has seriously been constricted because of Cricket remaining outside serious academics. (We have just learnt that he'd turn 25 tomorrow, March 8. Happy Birthday!)