‘The prince of batsmen’ or ‘just another of those Asiatics’?: Ranjitsinhji in Australia, 1897–1898

Abstract

This article is a study of how Australians responded to the visit of the Indian batsman Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji with the England cricket team during the summer of 1897–1898. Ranjitsinhji arrived as a cricketing celebrity with an unrivalled record of run-scoring and a reputation as England's premier batsman. However, he was an elusive figure who had carefully cultivated the extravagant, aristocratic lifestyle of an English ‘sporting gentleman’, balanced, paradoxically, with an equally constructed image of an exotic Oriental prince.

The article surveys contemporary, metropolitan and regional colonial newspapers to explore popular representations of Ranjitsinhji in Australia. Initially, he received an ecstatic welcome. Many sections of the public lauded his brilliance as a batsman, particularly his daring and innovative stroke play. Others responded to his romantic mystique and viewed him as a successful product of the British imperial process of refashioning the Indian princes as exotic types. However, as the tour progressed, Ranjitsinhji came under criticism for his intemperate remarks about the behaviour of local crowds and the aggressive behaviour of opposition players. In the context of the colonies' progress towards Federation and the inauguration of ‘White Australia’, Ranjitsinhji's identity was interpreted increasingly in terms of his race and he became a politicized figure, drawn into debates about immigration, culture and national identity. The article concludes by suggesting that Australians' views of Ranjitsinhji were contested because their imagining of India itself at the end of the nineteenth century was fragmented.

Keywords:

• cricket
• empire
• race
• White Australia
• identity

Acknowledgement

I would particularly like to thank Brian Stoddart for his encouragement and wise advice in commenting on the drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Sen, Migrant Races, 25.

2. The process of constructing Ranji's identity in England has been critiqued in the following: Wilde, Ranji; Williams, Cricket and Race, 19–33; Rodrigues, Batting for the Empire; Sen, Migrant Races; and Finkelstein, “Ranjitsinhji's Jubilee Book.”

3. Wilde, Ranji, 37, 61, 70; Williams, Cricket and Race, 26; and Finkelstein, “Ranjitsinhji's Jubilee Book,” 39. Photographs of Ranji in a traditional dress were published in The Windsor Magazine and other conservative journals.

4. Wilde, Ranji, 37.

5. Cardus, Good Days, 70–71.

6. Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture, 136.

7. Williams, Cricket and Race, 26.

8. Some well-known instances where Ranji's Indian background was held against him are discussed in the following: Wilde, Ranji, 39–40, 64, 66; Frith, Golden Age of Cricket, 57; Whimpress, “Ranji and Mullagh,” 54–55; and Roebuck, Great Innings, 54.

9. Mercury (Hobart), 10 June 1893 and South Australian Register, 12 June 1893. Ranji's biographer Wilde maintains this was the match in which Ranji introduced the leg-glance, the stroke that became his signature. Wilde, Ranji, 46.

10. Illustrated Sydney News, September 9, 1893.

11. Pollard, The Turbulent Years, 44.

12. Argus, August 21, 1896 and Sydney Morning Herald, July 1896.

13. South Australian Register, August 13, 1897.

14. Brisbane Courier, July 17, 1897and Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth), October 1897.

15. Sydney Morning Herald, July 14, 1897 and Advertiser (Adelaide), July 14, 1897.

16. ‘Observer’: ‘International Cricket. England v. New South Wales. In the Crowd’. Sydney Morning Herald, November 13, 1897.

17. Sydney Morning Herald, October 22 and 25, 1897; Argus, October 25, 1897; and South Australian Register, October 25, 1897.

18. Ranjitsinhji, With Stoddart's Team, 48–60.

19. Argus, December 17, 1897.

20. Wilde, Ranjitsinhji: His Record, 12.

21. Hutchison and Ross, 200 Seasons, 111.

22. Wilde, Ranjitsinhji: His Record, 3. The Rockhampton Capricornian reported the New South Wales team using this tactic when Ranji batted in the match in Sydney before the fifth Test. Capricornian, February 19, 1898. A photograph taken of Ranji batting at The Oval during Australia's 1899 tour of England clearly shows Australian close catchers behind square leg, as well as in the gully and two at point for Ranji's lofted cut stroke. Ross, Ranji: Prince of Cricketers, 64–65. Perhaps the practice of captains tailoring fielding positions to suit individual batsmen is an indirect example of Ranji's lasting impact on the game.

23. Argus, February 1, 1898.

24. Argus, November 4, 1897.

25. Launceston Examiner, November 13, 1897.

26. Argus, January 31, 1898 and Hirst, The Sentimental Nation, 230–31.

27. Launceston Examiner, January 10, 1898.

28. Argus, November 8, 1897; Advertiser (Adelaide), February 28, 1898. The total crowd numbers for the five-Test series was given as 320,000. Argus, March 24, 1898.

29. South Australian Register, November 13, 1897; Sydney Morning Herald, November 13, 1897, January 5, 1898; Mercury, November 17, 1897; and Advertiser, January 18 and 20, 1898.

30. Launceston Examiner, January 5, 1898.

31. South Australian Register, September 4, 1897 and Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), September 7, 1897.

32. Capricornian (Rockhampton), February 5, 1899; West Australian, April 30, 1898; Argus, May 21, 1898; Standing, Ranjitsinhji: Prince of Cricket, 97; and Wild, The Biography of Ranjitsinhji, 50.

33. Argus, January 3, 1898; Sydney Morning Herald, March 4, 1898; and West Australian, October 13, 1897, November 11, 1897, February 9, 1898.

34. Argus, May 21, 27, 28, 1898. I am grateful to the Canberra film historian, Tony Martin-Jones, for this reference. For detailed information about the Ranji film, see www.apex.net.au/˜tmj/cricket-films.htm. The National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra holds a copy and it may be viewed by contacting www.nfsa.gov.au.

35. Brisbane Courier, November 26, 1897.

36. Inquirer and Commercial News, October 1, 1897; Kalgoorlie Western Argus, November 26, 1897; and Brisbane Courier, November 27, 1987.

37. Finding no term in the batting copybook to describe Ranji's leg-glance, one South Australian player referred to the stroke as a ‘cut to leg.’ South Australian Register, November 1, 1897.

38. Inquirer and Commercial News, October 1, 1897; Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton), October 6, 1897; Argus, November 1, 1897; and South Australian Register, November 1, 1897.

39. South Australian Register, October 30, 1897 and Advertiser, October 30, 1897.

40. Wilde, Ranji, 67.

41. Ibid., 72.

42. ‘Prince Ranjitsinhji practising batting at the nets, Association Cricket Ground, Sydney December, 1897’. No. 623954. National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. http://www.nfsa.gov.au.

43. Argus, August 7, 1897.

44. ‘Observer’: ‘International Cricket. England v. New South Wales. In the Crowd’. Sydney Morning Herald, November 13, 1897.

45. Capricornian, April 9, 1898.

46. Queenslander, December 4, 1897.

47. Mangan, The Games Ethic, 132–135; Williams, Cricket and Race, 1; and Ranjitsinhji, Jubilee Book.

48. Argus, August 7, 1897. See also the Border Watch (Mount Gambier), December 2, 1897 for similar views.

49. Launceston Examiner, July 12, 1893. Ranji was a distant relative of the ruler of Nawanagar and had been informally and temporarily adopted for a time when no male heir had been born. Wilde suggests the belief that he was a prince originated in a misunderstanding in 1893, when a Bournemouth newspaper assumed he was of royal lineage because he had been holidaying in the town with one Mansur Khachar, ‘a genuine prince.’ Wilde, Ranji, 29–30. For similar views on Ranji's pedigree, see Border Watch, December 2, 1896 and South Australian Register, October 27, 1897.

50. Mercury, June 27, 1896.

51. South Australian Register, October 27, 1897.

52. Western Mail (Perth), November 19, 1897. Contemporary reports of Ranji's build could differ wildly; the Clarence and Richmond Examiner described him as ‘not tall’, while the Argus had him as ‘tall in stature’, an inconsistency that contributed to the uncertain and slightly unworldly impression of his physical appearance. Clarence and Richmond Examiner, October 6, 1896; Argus, August 21, 1896. Ranji was about 1.79 metres in height, well below the towering figure of his near-contemporary W.G. Grace (1.88 m) but taller than modern-era batting champions Bradman (1.70 m), Lara (1.73 m) and Tendulkar (1.65 m). Robinson, Between Wickets, 198.

53. South Australian Register, October 25, 1897.

54. The Australian press had regularly employed a battery of images to suggest Ranji's physical qualities to readers who had little chance of ever seeing him. He was said to have a ‘huge piercing eye’, ‘the eye of a hawk’; his wrists were ‘juggler's wrists’, or ‘steel bands’, made of ‘Toledo steel’. As a fieldsman, Ranji was ‘the personification of gracefulness’, possessing ‘cat-like agility’. See, for example, Argus, November 1, 1897; Kalgoorlie Western Argus, November 26, 1896; Clarence and Richmond Examiner, October 6, 1896; Advertiser, June 15, 1896; and Launceston Examiner, July 12, 1893.

55. Sen, Migrant Races, 40.

56. Euroa Advertiser, November 19, 1897.

57. Gippsland Times, November 15, 1897.

58. Wilde, Ranji, 44.

59. Ibid., 66; South Australian Register, November 2, 1897.

60. Gippsland Times, 1 November 1897 and Advertiser, January 20, 1898.

61. Advertiser, January 20, 1898 and Inquirer and Commercial News, January 21, 1898.

62. Argus, January 6 and 20, March 4, 1898; Singleton Argus, January 8, 1898; West Australian, March 4, 1898; Inquirer and Commercial News, January 21, 1898; and Sydney Morning Herald, January 6, 1898.

63. Later in the tour, Ranji generously credited Australia's triumph in the series to the simple fact of its superiority in all facets of the game. See, for example, the South Australian Register, March 24, 1898 and Queanbeyan Age, February 5, 1898.

64. Ranjitsinhji, With Stoddart's Team, 156–157.

65. South Australian Register, July 4, 1898. See also the West Australian, June 11, 1898 and the Clarence and Richmond Examiner, June 7, 1898, for similar comments.

66. Cashman, ‘Ave a Go’, 42, 48; Cashman, Sport, 27.

67. Barracking was not exclusive to the public sections of grounds. During the fifth Test at Sydney, Stoddart, the English captain, left the English dressing room in the Members’ Pavilion to remonstrate with three gentlemen standing in front. Cashman, ‘Ave a Go’, 49.

68. Healesville Guardian and Yarra Glen Advocate, February 5, 1898.

69. Capricornian, February 5, 1898.

70. Cashman, Sport, 24.

71. Sen, Migrant Races, 33.

72. West Australian, March 4, 1898; Argus, March 4, 1898; and Healesville Guardian and Yarra Glen Advocate, February 5, 1898.

73. Advertiser, January 20, 1898.

74. Cashman, ‘Ave a Go’, 51.

75. Advertiser, January 20, 1898.

76. Williams, Cricket and Race, 26.

77. Mercury, June 27, 1896.

78. South Australian Register, November 2, 1897.

79. Advertiser, January 21, 1898.

80. Clarence and Richmond Examiner, June 7, 1898; Capricornian, February 5, 1898.

81. Bulletin, September 9, 1899. See also Cashman, Sport, 146.

82. Queenslander, 4 December 1897.

83. South Australian Register, August 13, 1897.

84. Advertiser, March 31, 1898.

85. Barrier Miner, December 1, 1897.

86. Markus, Australian Race Relations, 76 and Lake, “White Man,” 101.

87. Tavan, White Australia, 9.

88. www.legislation.nsw.gov/sessionalview/sessional/act/1896-42a.pdf

89. Advertiser, November 29, 1897; Clarence and Richmond Examiner, October 24, 1897.

90. www.legislation.nsw.gov/sessionalview/sessional/act/1896-42a.pdf

91. Mercury, November 7, 1897; Wilde, Ranji, 50, 89; Pollard, The Turbulent Years, 57.

92. Lake, “White Man,” 105–6.

93. Sydney Morning Herald, October 14, 1897.

94. www.legislation.nsw.gov/sessionalview/sessional/act/1896-42a.pdf and Yarwood, “The ‘White Australia’ Policy,” 262.

95. Western Mail, November 19, 1897 and The Worker, November 20, 1897.

96. Williams, Cricket and Race, 31.

97. Argus, August 7, 1897.

98. Sen, Migrant Races, 3.