Origin of Cricket in India

With the 12^th edition of Cricket World Cup 2019, the finals to be precise, being played in England as we speak, the Men in Blue had pretty much made it evident why they were the favourites of this tournament. A shocking defeat in the semi’s against New Zealand, knocked us out of the tournament. However, on a positive note, our boys gave a tough fight. We fought hard till our last breath. On a side note, (I felt it was important to mention this), it’s still so shocking that one of the matches which every Indian and Pakistani fan still looks forward to is the India vs Pakistan match. A country, which almost 72 years ago was a part of India, is now one of our “biggest rivals” in cricket. In fact have you ever realised that we’ve absolutely stopped having an India-Pakistan tournament now? Anyway, other things aside, have we ever stopped to look back at the history and origin of cricket in India? (And by that I don’t just mean the historic 1983 world cup win)

The historic 1983 World Cup Win

I think most of us here would be able to put our fingers on who was responsible for bringing this game into the Indian subcontinent in the first place. That’s right, it was the “English East India Company”.  The first ever recorded match of cricket in India was played back in 1721. However an official cricket club “The Calcutta Cricket Club”, was set up, fast forward 17 years, in 1792 in Calcutta at the very place where the “Lord’s of India” the Eden Gardens now stands. However at that time the membership was restricted only to the Europeans. Five years later Bombay hosted its first ever match. Soon, they officially began playing matches as a team. By the late 1700’s, the Parsi cricket team was formed. It was known so, because it was founded by members of the Zorastrian Community. They took on the Eton Gamblers, an English cricket team. By 1848 they founded the Orient Club and used the thrown-away resources of the Bombay Gymkhana, as a result of scarce cricket equipment being available at the time, an exclusive European Club. This just shows how even back in the 19th century, even in the field of sports the British had such a strong hold on who would play in the team and who would be allowed to enter the sports clubs. It’s ironic isn’t it how the “Bombay Gymkhana” was an exclusive “European Club”?

The Parsi Cricket Team which toured England in 1866 won only 1 out of 28 matches

All though the team was known as the All India Cricket Team, it consisted mostly of Europeans at the time, for obvious reasons. Soon, the team started playing competitive cricket, after successfully defeating the Europeans in 1877, and started planning tours of England and Australia. (Although the Australia tour was eventually cancelled). Soon after, Competitive Domestic cricket started in India for the first time. The only two teams that existed in India at the time were the European and Parsi team. These came to be known as the Presidency matches. In 1907, the Hindus joined the Europeans and the Parsis (which came to be known as Triangular series) and soon after the Mohomaddens joined, with the Christians and Jews forming a team called The Rest and officially joining the tournament which finally came to be known as the Pectangular.  Now that you look back at it, the British policy of Divide and Rule also reflected in the field of sports a bit with every “community” forming its own team. So, the question that arises is that was this done on purpose by the British? Or was this just a result of the junk that had infiltrated our minds because of the British in the past 60 odd years?

KS Ranjitsinhji] (1900)

In 1928, the Board of Cricket Control in India was established after realising the need for a central governing body for the Cricket teams. They organised a tournament between the princes and the princely states, which is still being played in India till date, known as the Ranji Trophy, named after the greatest Indian cricketer of that time KS Ranjitsihji of Nawanagar, (a village in current day Bihar). Finally, in 1931, India was recognised as an official Test cricket team by the ICC. Soon after it also participated in the first ever edition of the Cricket World Cup in 1975. (This edition of the world cup was one of the only three times that India got eliminated at the group stage itself viz – 1975, 1979, 2007) Funny isn’t it, how we’ve beaten the same team that introduced the game to us and that we’re now the number one test team in the world with our captain being the number one Test cricket batsman?

A game which was introduced in India by the people who ruled over the country for nearly 200 years, has, over the years become one wherein we’re one of the best in in the field now. Although we got knocked out of the tournament in the semi’s, our boys gave us a lot of achievements to be proud of. As Rohit Sharma said, “30 minutes of poor cricket cost us the World Cup”. Anyway, who do you think is gonna win the Cup today?

Sources:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/261616.html

www.indianmirror.com/games/cricket/cricket-history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_the_Cricket_World_Cup