Chapter - 7 History and Sport: The Story of Cricket

Introduction:

• About 500 years ago in England, cricket grew out of many stick and ball games played. The word ‘bat’ is an old English word that simply means a stick or club. By 17^th century cricket had evolved to be recognized as a district game.
• Till the middle of 18^th century, bats were roughly the same shape as of hockey sticks, curving outwards at the bottom because the ball was bowled underarm, along the ground and the curve at the end of the bat gave the batsman best chance of hitting.
• Sport is a large part of contemporary life: it is one way in which we amuse ourselves, compare with each other, stay fit and express our social loyalties. The game was linked to the wider history of colonialism and nationalism was in part shaped by politics of religion and caste.

The historical development of cricket as a game in England

• Cricket has its unique nature amongst all of the other modern games. For e.g. test cricket is a match which can go for 5 days and still can end in a draw. Even a football match can get over in an hour and a half of playing time. Cricket has been a very lengthy game as compared to others.
• Another curious feature of cricket is length of its pitch which is kept 22 yards long but the shape and size of the ground is not decided. Other sports like hockey or football lay down the dimensions but cricket does not.
• Cricket was earliest modern sport. it gave itself rules and regulations so that it could be played in a uniform and standardized way as other team games like soccer and hockey. The first written laws of cricket were drawn up in 1744.
• The Empires were given the power to decide on all disputes. The height of stamps, length of bails, weight of the ball and length of pitch were stated in the laws.
• The world’s first cricket club was formed in Hambledon in the 1760s and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787. MCC published its first revision of laws in 1788 and became guardians of cricket’s regulations.
• Pitching the balls through air became common during the 1760s and 1770s. A departure from underarm bowling allowed the bowlers the option of length, deception through the air and increased pace. This also opened the possibilities for spin and swing bowling. Curved bats were replaced by straight bats. Arrival of straight bats also meant that instead of realizing on brute force, the batsman can rely on skills.
• The weight of ball was limited to 5.5-5.75 ounces and width of bat to 4 inches. In 1774. The first leg before law was published. Also the third stump is common.
• Many other important changes occurred during 19^th century like the rule about wide balls was applied, the circumference of ball was specified, protective equipments like pad and gloves are available, boundaries were introduced and over-arm bowling became legal. Cricket remained a pre-historical sport that matured during the early phase of industrial revolution.
• Equipments of cricket also changed with time. Its tools were all made up of natural and pre-industrial materials. Even today both bat and balls are handmade, not industrially manufactured. Tools made of plastic; fiber glass and metal have been firmly rejected.

Cricket and Victorian England

• The organization of cricket reflects nature of English society. The rich who could afford to play for pleasure were called Amateurs and the poor who played cricket fir their living are called professionals. To play for pleasure of playing and not for money was an aristocratic value.
• The social superiority of amateurs was built and they were called Gentlemen while professionals were described as players. The professionals were paid patronage or subscription or gate money. The game was seasonal and did not offer employment the whole year.
• Gentlemen and players entered the cricket grounds from different entrances. Amateurs tend to be batsmen and professionals have to bowl. Cricket is batsmen’s game because its rules were made to favour ‘Gentlemen’ who did most of the batting and captain of team is generally a batsman who was “gentlemen’.

The Spread of cricket

• While some other games like hockey and football became international games played all over the world, cricket remained a colonial game. It was limited to those countries which were part of British Empire. In the colonies, cricket remained a popular sport of the white settlers, e.g. in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies and Kenya. It also became popular among locals e.g. in India.
• British imperial officials tried to spread the game especially in central territories where Empire was mainly non-white such as India and West Indies. The first non-white club in the West Indies was established towards the end of 19^th
• When the West Indies won its 1^st test series against England in 1950, it was celebrated as national achievement. It is because of 2 ironies, 1^st – the West Indian team that won was captained by a white player. 2^nd – the West Indian cricket team represented not one nation but several dominions that later became independent countries.

Cricket, Race and Religion

• Cricket in colonial India was organized in the principle of race and religion. The first record of cricket being played in India was in 1721 in Cambay. The first Indian club, The Calcutta Cricket Club (ICC) was established in 1792.
• Through the 18^th century, cricket in India was almost a wholly sport played by British military men and civil servants in all-white clubs and gymkhanas.
• Parsis are the ones who founded the first Indian Cricket Club, The Oriental Cricket Club in Bombay in 1848. Parsi clubs were funded and sponsored by Parsi businessmen like the Tatas and the Wadias. The white cricket elite in India offered no help to the enthusiastic Parsis. The Parsis made their own gymkhanas and finally defeated the Bombay gymkhana in a match in 1889.
• The British did not consider colonial India as a nation but as a collection of castes, races and religious communities and gave themselves the credit for unifying the sub-continent. In late 19^th century, many Indian institutions and movements were organized around the idea of religious community because the colonial state encouraged these divisions and was quick to recognize communal institutions.
• The teams that played colonial India’s greatest and most famous first-class cricket tournament did not represent regions, but religious communities. The tournament was initially called the quadrangular, because it was played by 4 teams: the Europeans, the Parsis, the Hindus, and the Muslims. It later became pentangular when 5^th team was added, namely, the Rest which comprised all the communities left over, such as Indians Christians.
• By the late 1930s and early 1940s, journalists, cricketers and political leaders had begun to criticize the racial and communal foundations of the Pentangular tournament. Even Mahatma Gandhi condemned the pentangular as a communally divisive competition that was out of place in a time when nationalists were trying to unite India’s diverse population. A rival first-class tournament on regional lines, the national cricket championship (later named Ranji Trophy) was established.

The Modern Transformation of the game

• Modern cricket is dominated by tests and one-day internationals, played between national teams. The players become famous are those who had played for their country. The players Indian fans remember from the era of the Pentangular and the Quadrangular are those who were fortunate enough to play test cricket.
• India entered the world of test cricket in 1932 before it became an independent nation because test cricket from its origins as a contest between different parts of the British Empire, not sovereign nations. The first test cricket was played between England and Australia when Australia was still a white settler colony, not even a self governing dominion.

Decolonization and sport

• Decolonization is the process in which different parts of the European Empires became independent nations. This process led to the decline of British influence in trade, commerce, military affairs, international politics and sporting matters.
• The imperial Cricket Conference ICC was Increased Cricket Conference in 1965. It was dominated by its foundation members, England and Australia, which retained the right of veto over its proceedings. The situation was in hand till 1989 England and Australia got equal membership.
• The colonial flavor of world cricket during the 1950s and 1960s can be seen from the fact that England and the other white commonwealth countries, Australia and New Zealand continued to play test cricket with South Africa which was a racist state that practiced a policy of racial segregation.
• Test playing nations like India, Pakistan and the West Indies boycotted South Africa, but they did not have the necessary power in the ICC to debar the country from the test cricket. That only came to pass when the political pressure to isolate South Africa applied by the newly decolonized nations of Asia and Africa combined with liberal feeling in Britain and forced the English cricket Authorities to cancel a tour by South Africa in 1970.

Commerce, Media and Cricket today

• Cricket was transformed in 1970s. 1971 was a landmark year because the first one-day international was played between England and Australia in Melbourne. The popularity of this shortened version of the game led to the First World Cup being staged in 1975.
• Centenary of test matches was celebrated in 1977. This was also the year in which Kerry packer {an Australian businessman}, signed up fifty one of the world’s leading cricketers against the wishes of the national cricket boards. He saw a huge opportunity in televised cricket. He staged the World Series cricket for about two years. Test matches and one-day internationals were played in this series. Many critics scoffed at it as “packer’s circus”.
• Cricket was a marketable game which could generate huge revenues. Cricket boards became rich by selling television rights to television companies. TV channels made money by selling TV spots to companies who were happy to pay large sums of money to air commercials for their products to cricket’s captive TV audience. Continuous TV coverage made cricketers celebrities who pay better than cricket boards.
• TV coverage changed cricket. It expands the audience for game by beaming cricket into small towns and villages and broadened cricket’s social base. Children who never got chance to watch international cricket because of living outside of big cities, where top-level cricket was played, could now watch and learn by imitating their heroes.
• The technology of satellite television and the world wide reach of multi-national TV companies created a global market for cricket. This shifted the balance of power in cricket: a process that had begun by the breakup of the British Empire was taken to logical conclusion by globalization.
• The centre of gravity also shifted due to the innovations in the cricket technique in recent years that came from the practice of sub-continental teams like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Pakistan was 1^st to start 2 great advances in bowling: ‘the doosra’ and ‘reverse bowling’. Doosra was developed to counter aggressive batsmen with heavy modern bats who threatened to make finger-spin and ‘reverse swing’ to move the ball.
• 150 years ago the Indian cricketers and the Parsis had to struggle to find an open space to play. But the global market had made Indian cricketers the best-paid and famous one in the game. World was a stage for them.

History said that this transformation was made by smaller changes like:

• The replacement of gentlemanly amateur by the paid professional
• The triumph of one-day game as it shadowed test cricket
• Remarkable changes in global commerce and technology.