J.M. Barrie’s celebrity cricket team
Pitamber Kaushik takes a look at a cricket team assembled by author J.M. Barrie in the years before World War I, that made up for what it lacked in athleticism with its enthusiasm for the game and the impressive literary roll-call of its membership
We take a look at at a cricket team assembled by author J.M. Barrie in the years before World War I
If I were to ask you how Winnie The Pooh, Peter Pan, Mowgli, Sherlock Holmes and The Invisible Man share a camaraderie: one beyond the obvious; beyond bookshelves, what would you think of? Disney? Bestselling? Animation?
Can a clique of elite literati get an etymology wrong? A clique so elite that it had multiple knights, nobel nominees, poetlaureate candidates, statesmen, royal academics, and aristocrats – including six future knights, two barons and at least three politicians.
The Allahakbarries was an amateur cricket team founded by J.M. Barrie, the Kirriemuirborn author of Peter Pan. The group was made up of like-minded contemporaries who shared his intellectual niche, including literary and artistic bigwigs such as Rudyard Kipling, H.G.Wells, Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, A.A. Milne, P.G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, Walter Raleigh, G.K. Chesterton, Henry Justice Ford and many others.
Wherever the cricket team played would have seen perhaps the highest concentration of prestige, scholarly esteem and literary accomplishment, putting even Oxbridge campuses to shame, and an extraordinary convergence of diverse merits, accolades and qualifications, only matched by a handful of award ceremonies and Royal Society meetings.
Team origins
The name of the team was derived
from the phrase ‘Allahhu Akbar’ and makes a pun on Sir James Barrie’s surname. It arose from a mistaken notion amongst the members that the Arabic phrase meant ‘Heaven help us’ instead of ‘God is great’. The usage was intended humorously (as with most things that pertain to Barrie), hinting at his partial realisation of his cricketing ineptitude.
Allahakbaries C.C. is a slim book documenting the exploits of this league of extraordinary gentlemen. Heavily-illustrated with humorous sketches and caricatures, and often mildly self-deprecating, the book was privately published for circulation amongst Barrie’s friends (as would be apparent, he’d quite the circle of acquaintances, from Ginsberg to Kerouac). This makes the booklet notoriously difficult to get one’s hands on and hence it is highly-prized among collectors. The 40-page booklet, first published in 1890, had its revised edition in 1899 and was reprinted in 1950, with a foreword by Sir Donald Bradman. Barrie’s salient comical touch is evident throughout the book. An introduction by a former junior team-member in the last edition of the book opens with the words: If you had met Barrie, a cricketer was about the last thing that you would have imagined him to be. For he was small, frail and sensitive, rather awkward in his movements, and there was nothing athletic in his appearance.
An unlikely athlete?
Barrie was the second youngest of six siblings, gaunt and slight of physique. Growing up, he was certainly not the athletic type, yet any sporting deficiencies were overshadowed by his enthusiasm for the sport of cricket.
Allahakbaries C.C. recalls his most remarkable calamity in the form of being clean-bowled by the famed American Broadway actress Mary de Navarro (nee Anderson) in the 1897 ‘test’ against the village of Broadway. In fact, the book itself is dedicated ′To Our Dear Enemy Mary de Navarro′. The Broadway star, who’d retired to Worcestershire, assembled a team from the community of artists resident in the area and used to play against the Allahakbaries, often getting their better, much to Barrie’s chagrin.
An illustration from the booklet drawn by the eminent Barnard Partridge, titled Result of the Test Match, 1808, depicts Barrie and Mary de Navarro in not the most amicable of terms, a mockingly confrontational moment. In those days, losing to a woman in a physical pursuit was a subject of embarrassment, derision and mockery.The characteristic postures, smug
Any sporting deficiencies were overshadowed by Barrie’s enthusiasm for the sport of cricket
expression and the difference in stature are all too noticeable. Barrie frequently made himself or his team the frivolous laughing stock in the work – which, considering self- and cross-descriptions of their sporting merits was often more truthful narration than selective emphasis.
The illustrator of the book is the same Barnard Partridge, who was once famously instructed by Barrie (the team’s self-appointed captain) as, ‘Partridge, when bowling, keep your eye on square leg. Square-leg, when Partridge is bowling, keep your eye on him!’.
Persona over play
As an assertive and tactical captain, Barrie forbade his team from practising on an opponent’s ground before a match, as ‘this can only give them confidence’.
Barrie’s team choice was based on persona over play. In his own words, ‘with regard to the married men, it was because I liked their wives, with the regard to the single men, it was for the oddity of their personal appearance’. His wish was fulfilled with the admission of naturalist Joseph Thomson, who swapped cricket whites for pajamas on the ground.
To say that Barrie was the weak link of his team’s batting order would have been an understatement. This was in spite of the general lack of sporting talent in the team. Augustine Birrell had to have the rules of the game explained to him en route to the field, including ‘which side of the bat to wave at the ball’ and ‘what to do when the umpire says “over”’. Birrell would go on to be the first secretary for Ireland during the Easter Rising.
Asked to describe his bowling, Barrie replied that after delivering the ball he would go and sit on the turf at mid-off and wait for it to reach the other end which ‘it sometimes did’. The team played for the sheer passion of the game, rather than the results and Barrie was generous in his praise for his teammates and opposition alike. For instance, he lauded a fellow teammate’s batting performance as, ‘You scored a good single in the first innings but were not so successful in the second’.
A reliable source?
His sole noteworthy achievement was that he had once bowled out Douglas Haig, later the commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I.
However, as Peter Pan’s First XI, a 2011 book on the subject suggests, some of Barrie’s tales should not be taken at face value, but perhaps more with a pinch of salt. Circumstances cited are scarce and most tales seem woven in the fabric of Barrie’s typical fantasising. Barrie was ever the taleteller, and is likely to have traded authenticity for anecdotal hilarity. He was someone who would rather had you believe his life was eventful, than glorious.
The Allahakbarries were essentially a long-running gag of Barrie’s. The book is full of jests and witticisms about his team′s abject lack of talent. It seems as if most players found it difficult to bat, bowl and or field. Able players were occasionally (as and when required) recruited to bolster the ranks. A certain player was described as ‘breaks everything except the ball’, while Barrie had to issue explicit directives to his players that ‘Should you hit the ball, run at once. Do not stop to cheer’. One French player thought that when the umpire called ‘over’, the game was literally finished.
The team could be regarded as the originator of ‘celebrity cricket’ and attracted considerable attention. It comprised Edwardian England’s crème de la crème intelligentsia. Barrie, ever-the child-at-heart, dwelt in fantasy and fables. His imaginative, adventurous self had a fondness towards explorers and navigators, something reflected in the fact that the team included two famed expeditioners: Hesketh-Hesketh Prichard and Robert Falcon Scott, as well as travellers of Africa Joseph Thomson and Paul du Chaillu.
The team played regularly until 1913, when the outbreak of World War I brought their sporting activities to an abrupt end. A few of the team’s younger players, including George L. Davies, an inspiration for Peter Pan, would die in the war. The gleeful, flamboyant team had a rather lacklustre and gloomy decline, penned in Barrie’s diary as:
Barrie had to issue explicit directives to his players that ‘Should you hit the ball, run at once. Do not stop to cheer’
The Last Cricket Match. One or two days before war declared – my anxiety and premonition – boys gaily playing cricket at Auch, seen from my window. I know they’re to suffer. I see them dropping out one by one, fewer and fewer.