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When, in the summer of 1911, a squad of barefoot Indian men of the Mohun Bagan football team defeated the British military East Yorkshire Regiment team in Calcutta to win the coveted Indian FA Shield, it exploded the myth of racial superiority on which British imperialism was based, and struck a symbolic blow against the empire. In contrast, the organisers of the first all-India cricket tour of Britain and Ireland, taking place that same coronation summer, sought to smother the flames of anti-colonial violence that had engulfed India and London, and express their loyalty to empire by promoting fraternal relations on the cricket field.
The team from Bombay was chosen on the basis of religion rather than region or merit alone, consisting of siZ 2arsis, five *indus, three Muslims and a Sikh captain. The tour was brought about by a coalition of the imperial sporting establishment and Bombay’s mercantile business elite, the Parsis.
Cricket Country explores both the history of imperial British cricket in India and colonial Indian cricket in Britain, as well as cricket as a vehicle for nation-building, cultural diplomacy, imperial pedagogy and masculinity, but at its heart tells the tale of a group of men in search of sporting glory. The team’s poor showing in Britain was blamed on excessive heat, a punishing schedule, the absence of the legendary batsman Ranjitsinhji and the disappearance of the team’s captain and his private secretary, which significantly weakened the order. *owever, one player, the Dalit (or ‘untouchable’) spinner Palwankar Baloo, past his prime at 36, overcame all obstacles, including caste discrimination on and off the pitch, to take more than 100 wickets and save the team from ignominy.
Prashant Kidambi traces the story in great detail, which will delight cricket enthusiasts, but has less to offer a wider readership. 0evertheless Baloo, hero of the tour and the book, deserves greater recognition, not just as a sporting icon but as a Dalit pioneer at a time when, even over a century later, the group’s rights are still imperilled in India.
Shompa Lahiri, author of Indian Mobilities in the West (Palgrave Macmillan)