An unsung history: the birth of Indian–Australian cricket

Abstract

In October 1935, a touring party embarked on the inaugural tour of India by an Australian cricket team. To a great, and somewhat stereotypical, extent popular representations of Indian–Australian relations are viewed through the lens of cricket – the national game in both countries. This study about a significant, yet overlooked, chapter in sporting history examines the Australian cricketers’ response to the social, racial and political hierarchies of late-colonial India. The experience of the touring party encouraged a re-imagining of ideological perspectives and this research has revealed a uniquely Australian subjectivity to the British colonization of India. The tour between the colony (India) and the dominion (Australia) can be interpreted as an anti-imperial gesture. Both countries were attempting to forge relationships that would be independent from Britain. The role of cricket, itself experiencing a renaissance during the 1930s as it transformed from a largely amateur pursuit to an increasingly professional occupation is interrogated. As part of this transformation international cricket positioned itself as an increasingly politicized global entity within the broader turbulence of the first-half of the twentieth century. All those involved in the tour are now dead. However a close historical analysis of previously lost, highly personalized, primary material (letters, manuscripts, photographs and cricket ephemera) enables an interpretation of the players’ experience. This study argues that sporting events can be interpreted as cultural ciphers yet scholars and the wider sports-writing community have neglected the historical significance of the 1935/36 tour. The unofficial status of the tour and its highly professional emphasis alienated it from the amateur ideals of contemporary Australian cricket. This transnational, multi-disciplinary approach addresses a lacunae in the professional trajectory of cricket. It also provides a new understanding and historical counter narrative of mid-twentieth century Indian–Australian sporting history and cultural exchange.

In 2006, I was the fortunate recipient of an unanticipated box of historic cricket artefacts that had previously belonged to Thomas (Tom) William Leather (1910–1991). Tom, an enthusiastic yet largely unknown sportsman, was married to Doll, my grandfather’s sister. My grandfather, William (Bill) Ponsford, an ex-Test and Victorian batsman, came to live with my family in Woodend, Victoria when I was 10, following the death of his wife. This early contact with him inspired my love for the game of cricket and my future professional trajectory, it also resulted in close contact with the Leather family.

Figure 1. Australian team (Madras 1936).

Source: Leather archive.

The acquisition of the box proved to be a momentous, in fact life-changing, event as I resigned from employment at the Melbourne Cricket Club, moved back home to live with my parents and embarked on research. The unassuming box proved to be an intriguing treasure trove. It contained photographs, programmes, scorecards, menus, balls and other ephemera that pertained to the 1935/36 inaugural Australian cricket tour to India. At the time, as a sport- and history-obsessed photographer, its arrival immediately piqued an interest, which quickly evolved from mere curiosity into a thirst to fathom the complex political and cultural circumstances that defined a long forgotten tour. Probing deeper into the iconology of the imagery, I began to contemplate the potential personal narrative of what the faded old images portrayed. The dusty old menus didn’t just provide information on the gastronomic repertoire of the day but they enabled invaluable insight into the nationalistic sentiments embedded in culinary consumption. The unassuming matte cricket ball with signatures of all the players, placed incongruously on a greening brass plinth, amongst the memorabilia, reveals the importance of the ball and the tour to Tom. Inevitably, at some stage, it was placed in a position of prestige. Tom’s comments on the tour itinerary, in almost indecipherable pencil scrawl, critically note his own performance and the result of the game, revealing enormous pride when he played well and the team won.

I began to question the significance of the archives and associated cricket ephemera and hastily realized that the objects and images expose the unique geopolitical environment from which they emanate. The memorabilia and the images promised to tell many stories and answer many questions about cricket, racial identity, the decline of the British Empire, gender, 1930s history and Indian–Australian relations. I soon recognized that this little-known tour – one that certainly has not been previously placed under the rigour of sustained academic interrogation or received much interest from the sporting community due to its unofficial status – represents a portentous epoch, one that succinctly typifies the tempo-spatial transitional environment of imperial affairs during the 1930s. The tour symbolized a new phase of cricket tourism and, indeed, cricket professionalism itself. The tour can be viewed as a politically motivated gesture, one that attempted to integrate the two countries within an environment where Indian-British coexistence was constantly challenged and the British Empire was crumbling. Likewise, Australia was seeking to forge unions in Asia as a conscious political move to demonstrate less reliance on Britain. The Bodyline cricket tour of 1932/33 had previously soured relations between England and Australia and escalated anti-English sentiment in Australia.

A sporting industry commences

On 9 October 1935, a team of cricketers embarking on the first tour by an Australia XI to the Indian subcontinent boarded the SS Mongolia, departing from Port Melbourne. It was an unorthodox touring group comprised of some retired Test cricketers as well as cricketing novices who had demonstrated potential. The wealthy and flamboyant potentate Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala in the northern Punjab generously and extravagantly financed the tour and chose Australian Francis (Frank) Tarrant as tour manager.¹ The players ranged in age from 20 to 53. Stalwart Jack Ryder was selected to captain the team, a role he had previously held in Test and Sheffield Shield encounters. Experienced batsman New South Wales and Test player Charlie Macartney was appointed to the position of vice-captain. Despite having no direct involvement in the tour, the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket (ABC) held jurisdiction over which Australian players were permitted to participate. Tarrant’s team selection was limited as an official Australian Test tour was simultaneously taking place in South Africa and the domestic Sheffield Shield competition could not be disrupted. It was a professional tour and the fact that players were paid generously to participate raised the ire of many in the deeply conservative Australian cricket community.

Despite the contemporary magnitude of the Indian–Australian cricket industry, the inaugural Australian cricket tour to India is an overlooked and disregarded chapter in cricket history.² Neglect by scholars, the media and cricket aficionados is evident as the tour has largely been omitted from sporting records and cricket historiography. This research has corrected this exclusion and mounts a persuasive argument for the historical significance of the inaugural tour between India and Australia.

A scrutiny of the cricketers’ responses to situations that they encountered reveals that their attitude towards the Indian cultural, social and racial environment evolved and ameliorated. From this study the impact of the changing dynamic of 1930s Indian–Australian relations, the trajectory of international cricket and the reformist nature of racial and imperial politics on the touring expedition forms a secondary argument. This evaluation sheds new light on the increasingly politicized role of world cricket and on Australia’s position, both sporting and strategic, in the complex dynamic of an establishing new world order.

The imperial history narrative has largely disregarded Australian–Indian relations prior to Indian independence in 1947. The unsanctioned tour challenged the Australian cricket establishment and in turn British Empire hegemony. The tour succinctly demonstrates revised Australian and Indian identities, both increasingly independent of Britain. The tour was not only the foundation of Indian–Australian cricket but it also broke down deeply ingrained racial stereotypes and hierarchic social mores. This is most evident in the relationship between Frank Tarrant and the Maharaja of Patiala, the two key figures of the tour and the main historical figures in this study, but it is also evidenced in the experiences of the touring Australian party and the teams they opposed during the unofficial series.

The tour is a fascinating historical case-study that exposes the rapidly evolving Australian understandings of race, class and nationalism in response to political and societal re-evaluation during the inter-war years. The tour is interrogated within the milieu of Australian, Indian and British politics, culture and economics pertinent to the late-colonial period. Findings have challenged orthodox interpretations of cricket history that have disregarded the role of the professional cricketer and overlooked tours not orchestrated and condoned by the official sporting fraternity. In this respect, the tour also serves as an antecedent to the 1970s Packer cricket rebellion and the lack of acknowledgement of the World Series Cricket Supertests in cricketing statistics.³

The role of cricket became progressively more politicized within the instability of the mid-twentieth century. Cricket increasingly represented more than a sporting encounter and this tour was fuelled with nationalistic sentiment and overt commercial objectives. The members of the Australian touring party were primarily motivated by the desire for financial gain following the Great Depression, not withstanding their role as sporting ambassadors, and it is perhaps unwittingly that they facilitated a pioneering cultural encounter. The insubordinate aspect of the 1935/36 tour contributed to its subsequent neglect in official commemoration: the unorthodoxy of the cricket tour – in many ways it was a rebel expedition – led to its seeming inconsequentiality to cultural and political history and its absence from the annals of cricket history.

Manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and mementos retained by the participants, contemporary newspaper reportage and subsequent player memoirs and family narratives constitute the primary research material. A rigorous analysis of the aesthetic and textual messages embedded in the hitherto unearthed material culture, including letters, manuscripts, photographs, curios, ephemera and memorabilia from the player archives (Leather, Ryder, Alexander, Bill, Nisar, Salahuddin and Tarrant) is undertaken. From this data, a combination of methodologies are employed to examine the previously overlooked tour and the role of cricket during the 1930s and then extrapolate their relevance to the interwar zeitgeist.

Ambiguities emerge

Geographically, Australia is positioned in the east however culturally the inhabitants and customs of the country are aligned with the west. The cricketers assimilate with the British in India through their whiteness yet are outsiders due to their colonial origins. Throughout the tour, the players operate as intermediaries between the sensibilities of the East and the West and the ambiguity of Australia’s position in the global hierarchy is central to this research. The series is a convergence of professional cricket and spectacle, an act of anti-imperial conduct and an exercise of exotic tourism: paradoxically affirming English imperial authority yet simultaneously ruthlessly challenging it. The tour is a significant juncture in the historical development of modern travel and celebrity culture. Contradictions emerge throughout its narrative. The players’ reaction to the social, racial and political circumstances they encounter did not correspond with the customary pro-imperial, self-assumed racially superior sentiment generally held by white cricketers at the time.

The tour demonstrates Indian–Australian amity and identifies the vulnerabilities in both countries’ sporting, cultural and political affiliations with Britain that fluctuated in response to economic and political necessity. The success of the British Empire required that her imperial possessions operated according to stringent racial, political and cultural hierarchies. Woollacott identifies the pecking order of the early twentieth century:

The settler colonies, which from 1901 constituted the federated Commonwealth of Australia and after World War I were termed a Dominion of the British Empire and Commonwealth, ranked below Britain because of colonial status but above the non-self-governing colonies and territories. (1997, 1006)

The prevailing social order of culture, race and politics in the Empire shaped cricket in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries yet the Bodyline tour of 1932/33 and the 1935/36 tour to India disrupted the model. The ramifications of both tours denote an ideological re-evaluation of the game as they challenged the validity of British hegemony.

By the 1930s, sport embodied some of the distinct characteristics at the fore of the political, social, cultural and racial revolution that was to take place in India with the withdrawal of the British, the onset of Indian independence and the geographic division of the country in 1947. Gorman critiques the changing dynamic of sport, imperialism and national identity through an interrogation of the 1930s Empire Games, which could equally apply to the 1935/36 Australian tour of India. He observed:

While imperialism was still an important element of the Empire Games, the event also represented several parallel historical developments. The most notable of these were the role of mass sporting events in expressing local and national identities, debates about the nature of amateur sport in the face of professionalization, and the incorporation of imperial competition within the broader confines of international sport. (2010, 614)

Throughout the 1930s, cricket emerged throughout the British Empire in popular culture, in a rapidly globalizing environment, and became invested with new ideological significance. The game adopted an increasingly commercially viable business structure that encouraged the advent of professional competitions embedded with innovative ideologies. Holden concedes that ‘the adoption of cricket in colonial societies involved a complex mixture of acceptance of and resistance to elements of British imperial culture’ (2008, 337).

Nationalistic sentiment is evident in the composition of the Indian teams that played against the Australians as they were almost exclusively comprised of locals from various cultural, social and religious backgrounds and Anglo-Indians were largely not permitted to participate.⁴ Team scheduling and tour ideology likewise evidenced commitment to egalitarianism, for example the Australian team refused honorary membership of any club where Indians were not granted a similar entitlement (Sporting Globe November 27, 1935). The tour’s democratic underpinning is not exclusively transparent and it sometimes manifests in a nuanced, subtle and subconscious manner. For example, tour imagery depicts the Australian team as socially integrated with the locals and journalistic reportage describes the sportsmanship and goodwill evident between the locals and the visitors. Indicators of the ensuing political and ideological restructure were consciously and at-times subconsciously evident in 1935/36. Indian anthropologist, Arjun Appadurai concurs:

It is probable that cricket nationalism and official nationalist politics were rarely wedded in conscious public debates or movements, but that they affected the lived experience of play, skill, space, and rights for many young Indians in the small towns and playing fields of India before independence. (1995, 33)

The tour signifies the developing globalization of cricket and the rapid evolution of the game, which oversaw its transition to a professional, and increasingly democratic, paradigm. The emergence of socially diverse cricketers, representative of all communal groups, such as C. K Nayudu, Lala Armanath and Mushtaq Ali, was witnessed in 1930s India. The rules were also undergoing modification with the sanctioned revision of the leg before wicket (lbw) rule introduced to the Laws of Cricket in 1937, a change that was preceded by vehement debate in cricket circles. Technological advancements in film (and subsequently television), radio and newspaper reportage augmented the coverage of cricket across India (and the wider Empire), making it accessible to almost the entire population and propelling the popularity of the game.⁵

The 1935/36 tour was a consequence, and reflection, of the intensely politicized environment of the interwar years. Eminent British historian David Cannadine has observed the acute instability of the interwar years (2002, 57). Certainly the decolonization process encompassed multiple shifting circumstances and emerging ideologies and is described by Goswami as comprising an animated ‘heady mix of utopian aspiration and pragmatic reckoning, collective action and conceptual improvisation’ (2012, 1462). Goswami’s ambiguity is evidenced throughout the primary material pertaining to the 1935/36 tour.

The period is distinguished by rapid industrial modernization; urbanization (including a transition away from an agrarian base); economic insecurity evidenced by the Great Depression; the emergence of authoritarian political regimes; and universal instability following the First World War (1914–1918). Stephen identifies the period as ‘a bridge between the Victorian era of unquestioned dominance and emerging discourses of colonial development and “race relations” that would gain ascendancy after the Second World War’ (2011, 164). Inspired by the insecurity of Britain’s role in the twentieth century, the colonies and dominions questioned their position in a new world order and contemplated a future independent of the mother country. Tellingly Stephen inquires, ‘Were Indians, who had contributed over one and a quarter million soldiers to the First World War, a subject people or “brothers of the empire”, co-equal members of the “imperial race”?’ (2011, 165). Motrescu likewise identifies the period as one of immense generational change and determines that interwar Australian identities were also undergoing substantial transition and were situated at an awkward ‘junction of imperial fantasy, myth, memory and national aspirations’ (2010, 318). Cannadine describes interwar India as a changing place of democratic political reforms, which fostered the Indianization of the civil service and oversaw a move to an increasingly secular, industrialized society (2002, 56). Indian sovereignty and the further liquidation of the British regime were flouted in January 1930 when the Indian National Congress passed a resolution urging Indians to protest in support of the nationalistic cause. Indian independence came at an immense cost and was realized alongside the partition of the country resulting in mass upheaval, conflict and an enormous loss of life. Guha describes the chaos, brutality and devastation as arguably ‘the greatest mass migration in history’ (2007, 31).

In 1935/36, the players were aware of the political turbulence in India as the Australian press comprehensively reported on it. Bill observed the precarious political climate in an article, prefaced by the subheading, ‘A “Scare”’. Bill wrote:

One morning, unwittingly, his Excellency played a trick on us that for the moment had us thoroughly bewildered. Sleeping soundly at 5.30 a.m., we were suddenly awakened by the deafening sound of gunfire right outside our window, many shots being fired in quick succession. Our first thoughts were that the Indians had risen against the Administration and were attacking the palace, but on peering through the window we discovered that an organized crow-shoot was in progress, with the Governor leading. (March 18, 1936)

This episode highlights the cricketers’ cognizance of the political turbulence in India and their propensity to utilize humour as a mechanism to cope with any threat of danger.

Cricket in Australia likewise embodied nationalistic sentiment and was entrenched in popular culture. Some cricketers, Donald Bradman being the paramount example, enjoyed celebrity status. Australian cricket paralleled the course of the young nation and transformed in compliance with the demands of changing political and cultural ideologies. Rivalry in Anglo-Australian cricket developed rapidly following the birth of the Ashes and the unanticipated victory of the Australian team in England in 1882. Nationalist sentiment proliferated and an ambivalent relationship with the mother county was frequently fought out on the pitch.

The Bodyline series of 1932/33 represents a significant juncture in the relationship between Australia and England, not just within a sporting paradigm, as the activity on the pitch reverberated beyond the boundary. England won the series in part due to the unsportsmanlike tactics employed by the team’s tacticians. The social drama spilt over the cricket-ground fences and inspired a passionate national debate – public sentiment was savage and was thrashed out in the press, parliament and the pubs. The cricket series damaged imperial unity and the Australian public viewed the English cricket team as the most despised sporting team to tour Australia. Inevitably, the English perspective to the 1932/33 series differed from Australia’s interpretation of events. Employing customary diplomacy, Sir Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner’s attitude to the series is culturally illuminating.⁶ Warner depreciates the controversy as being like a ‘row’ and suggests that nothing personal was intended and for the most part the English cricketers were treated with ‘the greatest kindness and hospitality’ (1942, 141).

Through a populist narrative the Bodyline series gave birth to ‘an independent and assertive Australian identity’ however Hutchins questions the potential for a nationalistic rebirth through ‘a game originating from and inextricably bound to British culture’ (2005, 15). Hutchins laments, ‘no one in the settler society challenged cricket itself’ (2005). The acrimony caused by the Bodyline incident resonated throughout the 1935/36 tour and, despite a persuasive academic argument that animosity was largely directed at English captain Douglas Jardine, it also informed the Australian attitude to British cricket, imperial politics and the legitimacy of colonization. The Bodyline series is referenced by the Australians in primary material pertaining to the Australian tour of India revealing the extent to which it determined the players’ attitude to cricket and imperial relations. Lisle Nagel, Herbert (Bert) Ironmonger, Hampden (Hammy) Love and Henry (Harry) Alexander participated in both series.

The Nawab of Pataudi (a very small princely state in Northern India), the first cricketer to play Test cricket for both England and India, debuted for England during the Bodyline series yet defied the English captain, Bombay-born Douglas Jardine’s, ‘unsporting’ directive (Roy 2011). The Nawab was dropped from the English squad despite making 102 in his maiden innings. Warner attributes Pataudi’s departure from the tour to him being ‘recalled to India by high authority to deal with the affairs of his State’ (Warner 1942, 140). However public sentiment interpreted it differently and Frith, in an article for the Guardian, describes the Nawab’s relationship with Jardine as ‘frosty’ (Frith 2011). Pataudi’s action contributed to an amicable relationship between Australia and India. Post-Bodyline animosity between England and Australia intensified, encouraging cricket professionalism with a ‘win at all costs’ mentality. The Bodyline incident and the Indian contribution to it encouraged Indian Australian friendliness and would resonate until the establishment of Test cricket in 1947/48.

The 1935/36 tour embodied the seemingly antithetical transnational struggle between cricket’s historic role ‘as an instrument of white élite exclusivism’ (Beckles 2000, 14) and the anti-imperial sentiment emerging within it. This is not a unique appraisal as scholars (Bose 1990; Beckles 2000; Nandy 2000; Guha 2002; Majumdar 2004b) have identified an analogy between bourgeoning nationalist campaigns and activity on the pitch. However the Australian contribution, and response, to the manifestation of Indian nationalism within the trajectory of cricket has been largely neglected. The 1935/36 tour is critiqued as a conduit to comprehending the role of cricket in Australia and India, colonial and post-colonial politics and the broader relationship between the two countries. The tour encouraged the visiting cricketers to reassess their racial, political and social preconceptions about India and arguably assisted the clarification of an Australian identity globally.

Despite a proliferation of Indian cricket research, especially in recent history, the absence of the 1935/36 tour from the literary canon is notable. This observation of omission confirms the elitist and racially exclusive reputation of cricket that has historically prevailed. Many scholarly publications and journals outline and rationalize the role of cricket in India. Examples relevant to this argument include: Patel (1905), Docker (1976), Cashman (1980), Bose (1990, 2006), Stoddart (1988, 2008), Stoddart and Sandiford (1998), Nandy (2000), Guha (2001, 2002), Majumdar (2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2006, 2007), Naha (2012, 2013) and more recently Simpson (2014).

Analysis ranges from Bose (1990), Guha (2002) and Majumdar’s (2004b) comprehensive overviews of Indian cricket history as a celebration of post-colonial triumph despite the earlier colonial limitations placed on the game, to the analysis by others who narrow the focus and time frame of their enquiry. Guha stipulates that his publication is ‘not so much a history of Indian cricket as a history of India told through cricket and cricketers’ (2002, xiii) disclosing the extent to which Indian cricket history and Indian history are synonymous entities. Guha has written extensively on Indian political and social history and therefore it is unsurprising that his appraisal of cricket is inexorably linked to the evolving cultural-political dynamic in a similar manner to Beckles (2000) examination of West Indian cricket. Frequently disregarded, Indian cricketer Palwankar Baloo is pivotal to Guha’s theories and the author cites him as being ‘the book’s most heroic character’ (2002, xiii).⁷ Indian teams competing against the Australians likewise comprised a communal and social cross-section yielding from diverse backgrounds.⁸ Akin to Guha contentions, activity on the pitch in 1935/36 revealed the socio-politic sensibility of the tour and disclosed the broader Australian-Indian dynamic.

Majumdar’s publication Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom also applies a cultural history appraisal of Indian cricket (2004b). He incorporates a wider geographic analysis and identifies that cricket across India did not operate according to the Mumbai [Bombay] communal model, which the author identifies is a common misconception (2004b, 14). During British colonization, India was divided into British India and somewhere between 500 and 600 autonomous princely states frequently served by their own judicial, transport and taxation systems. India was culturally and geographically disparate comprising diverse social practices, languages and religions. Research for this publication concurs with Majumdar’s findings and reveals that the Australians, as they journeyed across India, acknowledged the cultural and geographic diversity and the variances in the structure of cricket competitions across the country. Majumdar identifies the rise of the commercialization of cricket from the 1930s through to Indian independence in 1947 (2004b, 15). This observation is pivotal to this critique of the 1935/36 tour as the series embodied a new phase of cricket development, one increasingly identified by commercialization, commodification and an emphasis on sporting celebrity.

Simpson (2014) authored an article analysing Indian–Australian relations through cricket from 1947 to 2012. The starting date of this research logically commences with Indian sovereignty and the first official Indian Test against the Australians. The contentions of the article are notable yet the time frame emphasizes scholars and the publics’ deferment to Test status and the disregard of the Indian–Australian cricket prior to India’s entry to the International Cricket Council (ICC). Analogous with some aspects of this research, Simpson observes that ‘early tours initially borrowed heavily from an orientalist rhetoric of racial stereotypes’ however this publication concludes that the tour defied convention and demonstrates an at-times liberal approach to racial inclusion and acceptance (2014, 37).

Australian-based scholars Docker (1976) and Cashman (1980) extensively interrogate Indian cricket. Their works signal a new historiography as they investigated the socio-political narrative of Indian cricket before British sports historians critiqued the subject. Cashman longitudinally evaluates the major stakeholders of Indian cricket responsible for its phenomenal success from the early days of royal patronage to its manifestation as a commercial enterprise in the post-colonial-era. Cashman conducted extensive interviews and compiled a compendium of appendices that provide invaluable statistics that reveal the composition, culture and social background of Test players. Cashman asserts that cricket was increasingly becoming a cross-class, cross-caste and cross-communal cultural practice.

Docker critiques the history of the game through to the mid-1970s. The Indian-English tours in 1926/27, 1932, 1933/34 and 1936 are detailed. The ensuing chapters interrogate the Bombay competition and identify key Indian protagonists in the evolution of the game. Despite brief mention of the 1935/36 tour, Docker’s narrative of Indian cricket history highlights the neglect of research into the conception of Indian-Australian cricket. Tarrant’s significant contribution to the development of the Indian game is also largely devalued. The publications written by Docker and Cashman, despite being written three decades after Indian independence, defy convention as they incorporate Indian collaboration.⁹ Docker and Cashman are frequently referenced by the subsequent generation of Indian scholars (Bose 1990; Guha 2002; Majumdar 2004b) revealing the significance of Australian scholarship to the literature on Indian cricket.

The inseparable link between cricket and the British Empire is a theme that post-colonial scholars have researched through evaluating the earlier era of cultural and political domination. The British utilized sport as a civilizing tool to implement order and restraint on the seeming disorder and chaotic environment of the East (Stoddart 1988, 653).¹⁰ The starting point, without doubt, in any analysis of cricket and its imperial role in the East begins with Sir Pelham Warner’s Imperial Cricket (1912). Lord Hawke (amateur establishment stalwart whose career included Eton, Cambridge, and major in the Prince of Wales Yorkshire regiment) introduced the publication by claiming that cricket is ‘the greatest game in the world played wherever the Union Jack is unfurled’ and attributes it as cementing ‘the ties that bind together every part of the Empire’ (1912, 1).¹¹ Hawke introduced the publication in a manner similar to Sir Henry Parkes’ famous phrase ‘the crimson thread of kinship’ (1890, 75). Beckles observes that Warner ‘articulated clearer than any other the power and predicaments of the first paradigm – colonial cricket and empire’ (2000, xv). Despite his allegiance to imperial hierarchal regimes, Warner’s pragmatic egalitarianism was sometimes evidenced in colonial cricket. In 1900, he fiercely defended the inclusion of locals in the first West Indian tour to England (Beckles 2000, 15). However, actions such as these could be viewed as a mercenary attempt to keep the Empire together. Warner wrote extensively on cricket’s imperial mission during the early twentieth century. His appraisal of cricket in the colonies, his at-times liberal attitude to racial inclusion, his personal association with the Bodyline tour and his contribution to the career of Frank Tarrant encourage his inclusion in this cricket critique.

A thorough investigation of the literature written on Indian and Australian cricket reveals that a comprehensive interrogation of the social and racial foundations of the 1935/36 tour does not exist. The paucity of research into the 1935/36 tour stems from its lowly reputation as a mercenary professional exercise and its unofficial status. Orthodox rationale attributes the Test status of cricket as defining it as worthy of commemoration and scholarship and the 1935/36 tour did not comply. The official cricket authorities shunned the tour and consequent public apathy stemmed from this ingrained reputation. However, the tour requires interrogation and its racial and political innovation encourages it to be critiqued through historical analysis and cultural theories. The only literature that has been uncovered that investigates the 1935/36 tour is one chapter titled ‘The Maharaja and his Sahibs from Down Under’ in Cricket beyond the Bazaar; a publication by Mike Coward (1990); an online publication by Morrisby’s daughter, Cecily Dougan, entitled Pioneers, ploughmen and pull-shots: a family’s experience in Tasmania from 1808 (2012); and S. K. Roy’s Australian Cricket Tours to India (1947).

Research for Coward’s invaluable narrative fortunately commenced while some team members were alive, however unfortunately this publication does not include referencing and notes. Coward’s portrays the tour as a fascinating tale and his publication is an enthralling populist study. It provides discursive commentary rather than systematic analysis. Dougan’s book is a Morrisby family history and includes a chapter on Ron’s tour to India. The publication uses letters, sent by Ron from India to the family, as an invaluable primary source, that provide the narrative with an authentic interpretation of the tour. Roy’s publication provides the statistics of the Australian Services tour to India in 1945 and the 1935/36 tour. Fortunately, Roy reasoned that both Australian tours were worthy of commemoration, which defied contemporary sentiment. However some inaccuracies are evident, generating from erroneous score-keeping and were replicated in some contemporaneous press articles. For example, although the Roy records indicate that Alexander did not participate in the Lahore unofficial Test the Alexander archive includes a photograph of him in his cricket whites and an article in the Maitland Daily Mercury reveals that he fielded poorly (January 13, 1936).¹²

Interest in the 1935/36 tour has, to some extent, gained currency in recent years. Recent journal articles reference the 1935/36 tour suggesting it has partially been rediscovered. In 2013, Heenan and Dunstan wrote ‘New Worlds and Old Prejudices: Australia, Cricket and the Subcontinent: 1880–1960’ and in 2012 Australian scholar Erik Nielsen authored ‘“Indian hockey [and football] tricks”: race, magic, wonder and empire in Australian–Indian sporting relations, 1926–1938’. The Heenan and Dunstan article provides an overview of Australian-Indian cricket over an 80-year period. This is an ambitious project considering the fundamental paradigmatic overhaul of the global game and the vital changes to the Indian political landscape over the duration. The material pertaining to the 1935/36 tour has been largely acquired from Coward’s book and a few supplementary newspaper articles.

Nielsen delivers a thorough analysis of Australian-Indian sporting interaction of the late-colonial period and provides a counterpoint to the findings of this research. Nielsen critiques the Bill articles in the Sydney Mail (November 29, 1935–March 18, 1936) to formulate his contention that ‘members of the Australian cricket team to India in 1935–1936 engaged in racially charged reportage’ (2012, 561). This contention is legitimate, yet Bill was far more sympathetic to India’s plight than Nielsen attributes. Nielsen contends that

Bill provided a travelogue that expressed some of the derogatory opinions of Indian society that have plagued the sometimes fraught relationship between the Australian and Indian cricket communities. After a number of disparaging and patronizing remarks at the expense of ‘dark-skinned’ officials and ‘black boys’ who aided the team while in Ceylon, Bill turned his attention to India. (2012, 554)

The 1935/36 tour does not demonstrate a ‘fraught relationship’ between the Indian and Australian cricket communities, nor are Bill’s opinions exclusively ‘derogatory’ (2012). Nielsen identifies apposite examples to support his contention yet overlooks Bill’s positive commentary that counterbalances the clichéd critical representations. Nielsen does not refer to Bill’s observations regarding the Indian crowd in Madras who ‘knew more about the fine points of the game’ (March 18, 1936); the exemplary soccer skills of the locals in Ceylon (December 11, 1935); the ‘highly educated’ Cingalese speechmakers who spoke perfect English and ‘overshadowed anything our speakers could produce’ (1935); the very comfortable and efficient Deccan Queen train and the luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel where the team experienced air-conditioning for the first time (January 8, 1936); or the array of superlatively educated Indian gentlemen, including the ‘Chief of Manavader (sic)’ who was ‘a charming chap’ (December 18, 1936, 22). Nielsen’s article identifies the discriminatory elements of Bill’s columns yet ignores all the contrary evidence.

An interrogation of the 1935/36 tour requires an understanding of Indian history yet this research does not profess to expansively critique Indian political history. However due to the significant role that sport, and especially cricket, played in validating and orchestrating British hegemony, some analysis of the cultural politics of colonization is imperative to provide a contextual historical backdrop to the 1935/36 cricket tour of India. Research on this tour modifies some of the assumptions that historians and cultural theorists have made about imperialism and inter-colonial relations at this time including: the scholarship of Edward Said and his publication Orientalism, first published in 1978 (2003 ed.), Cannadine (2002), Ferguson (2003, 2006) and Guha (2007, 2013). These scholars present well-researched overviews of the Empire utilizing colonial discourse analysis. They argue disparate theories that contain sometimes-contentious interpretations such as the conservative line adopted by Ferguson whose research demonstrates overwhelming imperial nostalgia. Cannadine argues that the feudal hierarchical social structure implemented by the British functioned as an inter-connecting system of networks that contributed to the Empire’s phenomenal success. Cannadine’s publication Ornamentalism (2002) was written as a rejoinder to the ideology that underpinned Edward Said’s Orientalism (2003). Said theorized that racial prejudice defined, and alienated, the East from the West. Cannadine counter-argued that social status and hierarchy defined imperialism and superseded classification by racial difference. Theories espoused by Said (2003), Ferguson (2003, 2006), Guha (2007, 2013) and Cannadine (2002) are employed to expose and substantiate the cricketers’ attitude to the racial, political and social circumstances they encountered in the late-colonial period. This in turn assists an interpretation of an Australian perspective to the colonization of India that does not solely replicate the British perspective and signifies the innovative nature of the tour and the emergence of an increasingly independent political ideology.

Cricket and, in particular, the competition between Australia and India has grown from its humble beginnings in 1935/36. The ever-changing face of the East-West dynamics has received persistent and recurrent analysis in academic research and assists the contentions formulated in this publication. Post-colonialism investigates the effects of colonization on cultures and societies, including the formulation of theories in response to themes of racial and gender identity. Post-colonial scholarship does not always reference the role of cricket, however it grapples with notions of history, agency, representation, identity and discourse, with the resultant codification of information, knowledge, belief and value systems. Scholars engaging in post-colonial analysis and globalization, relevant to this research, include: Said (2003), Turner (1994), Appadurai (1995), Beckles (2000), Nandy (2000), Rastegar (2008), Scott (2011) and Bhabha (2012). Numerous post-colonial scholars have critiqued Indian cricket as a unique, immensely popular, cultural phenomenon embedded in the consciousness of the country (best known examples include Nandy [2000, 1–4], Ugra [2005, 77–93] and Valiotis [2005, 1131]).

Indian social theorist, Ashis Nandy’s, publication, The Tao of Cricket: On games of destiny and destiny of games (2000), is central to research findings. Nandy does not cite the 1935/36 tour, however he closely critiques the evolution of Indian cricket and its response to nationalist ideology. Nandy observes that he is not a sportswriter however, he interrogates cricket through a post-colonial argument enabling a full articulation of the subject. The oft-quoted opening sentence of the book unambiguously sets the tone as Nandy boldly proclaims that ‘cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English’ (2000, 1). He argues that while the British conceived cricket, it is culturally congruous with the skill set and ideology of inhabitants of the subcontinent. He identifies key players (Grace and Jardine) in the history of the game who are extensively critiqued by other scholars and includes a refreshing appraisal of other players less frequently assessed in cricket historiography, beyond cursory biographical inclusion, such as Deodhar. Nandy concludes by prophesying that for the Indian game to prosper it must be played in accordance with Indian cultural ordinance rather than replicating history and employing the codes, ethics and motivations of the British game. In response to Nandy’s analysis, this publication identifies that Indian post-colonial sensibility was already embedded in aspects of the 1935/36 competition.

Accordingly, this publication does not attempt to rationalize the popularity of cricket in India, however primary material reveals that the 1935/36 competition was phenomenally popular. Guha celebrates India’s overwhelming embrace of cricket and proclaims:

They have played and watched and talked cricket with a verve and intensity that would have amazed, and perhaps dismayed, the game’s Victorian chroniclers. Indeed, the case can be made that as a national sport Indian cricket has no parallel. (2002, xii)

The popularity of the contemporary game in India is undeniably immense and Ugra boldly analogizes cricket with religion and references the Indian cricket crowd who held a banner proclaiming that Sachin Tendulkar was their god (2005, 77). Many scholars have attempted to rationalize the popularity of the game in India however a common misconception prevails that the popularity of the game did not fully manifest as a post-colonial phenomenon until post-independence in 1947. Instead I argue that the popularity of cricket in India is not an exclusively modern development and that the game, as evidenced by primary evidence pertaining to the 1935/36 tour, has always been popular, both as a participant and spectator sport. Therefore what is assumed to be a post-colonial development was already evidenced in the Australian-Indian encounter. The cricketers observed the popularity of the game as evidenced by the substantial crowds attending the matches. Bill is surprised that close to 5000 people attended the training session in Bombay (December 11, 1935). The majority of the visiting players (many who were nonentities in Australia) were unaccustomed to the celebrity status they achieved in India. Oxenham claimed that despite it being ‘a very interesting visit’ he was already keen to ‘get away’ from the crowds of schoolboys in Colombo, the first port of call on the tour (November 18, 1935). He wrote, ‘Never before did I imagine that there were so many autograph books in the world! I almost had writer’s cramp!’. Cricket’s appeal was growing rapidly and already in 1935/36 it occupied an important role in national consciousness and showed evidence of the iconic institution it was and would increasingly become. Cricket, as evidenced by the 1935/36 tour was more than a game; it was an enormously powerful cultural institution that reflects the transitioning political and cultural sensibility at the time.

The scholarship of Patel (1905), Deodhar (1948), de Mello (1959), Ali (1967), Mukherjee (1968) and Ramaswami (1971) are valuable primary sources as they provide a contemporaneous Indian interpretation of the game and its politicization. These publications (with the exception of Patel’s) reference the 1935/36 tour as first-person recollections: the authors were involved as either players or administrators. Publications like these are rare as commentary on cricket was restricted to the domain of the British. Self-reflection on the domestic Indian game was uncommon prior to independence and was still considered a rather audacious act following sovereignty. Without the luxury of hindsight, these authors outline the transitional circumstances of cricket within the trajectory of the political landscape. These observations are invaluable as they reflect a contemporaneous perspective of Indian cricket rather than employing retrospective analysis. Wagg views self-reflection as the fundamental prerogative of a democratic society and post-colonial analysis of the Indian game as ‘the crucial need for formerly colonial subjects to speak for themselves’ (2005, 2). Wagg theorises that the rigorous process of self-reflection on the Indian game empowers the post-colonized society. The post-colonial emergence of Indian-authored publications on Indian cricket is reflective of nationalist ideology, the growing proprietorship of the game and the need for subaltern perspectives on cricket – the most quintessential of English institutions.

The attitude of the Australian players invited to join the rebel professional tour is critiqued through an evaluation of their heuristic responses to the cultural differences they encountered in India and by detection of change, if any, in their subjectivity. An evaluation of unpublished memoirs of the tour by Hunter Hendry (n.d.) and Bill (ca. 1936–1988) is conducted throughout.¹³ An interrogation of culturally revealing letters written by Ryder and Morrisby is executed to determine their vernacular perspective. The Australians on the tour: Macartney, Tarrant, Ryder, Oxenham, Bill and John (Jack) Ellis authored contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles describing the cricket matches and the cultural exchange.¹⁴

Equally disclosing, if not more so, are the players’ photographs (many with accompanying text). The cultural signals transmitted through these images are interrogated. An appraisal of the photographic imagery, and additional material culture, provides a supplementary layer of interpretation that greatly assists the comprehension of this largely undocumented episode of Indian-Australian cricket history. The vernacular candour of the imagery makes the photographs significant in assisting an understanding of the dynamics of the tour.

The examination of artefacts, especially images, located in the private collections of the players (Leather, Alexander, Ryder, Salahuddin and Nisar) and from club archives including those of Cricket New South Wales, the Melbourne Cricket Club and the Cricket Club of India are undertaken within the milieu of theories espoused by Sontag (2008), Urry (1992), Mavor (1997), Appadurai (1988), Haldrup and Larsen (2003), Di Bello (2008), Huggins and O’Mahony (2011), Dohmen (2012), Engmann (2012) and Stevenson (2013). Huggins and O’Mahony identify the importance of visual culture in the scholarly investigation of sport and lament that until recently it has not been bequeathed due deference (2011). They argue that traditionally scholars have used images to reinforce theories; they were not viewed as entities worthy of specific research until the 1980s (2011, 1089). The 1935/1936 images are analysed through the theories espoused by Urry who critiques the tourists’ motives to document an authentic experience (1992, 173). Fuelled by the tourists’ perceptions of cultural and racial identity the locals frequently perform the mandatory exotic role as a commercial transaction. In addition, a textual critique of the advertisements, scorecards, menus and tourist memorabilia is undertaken to identify the sometimes intimate and sometimes empathetic dialogue transpiring between the Australians and the locals. In the absence of living participants, the highly subjective images provide imperative key pointers to critique the cricketers’ experiences. They provide a personalized subjectivity to the players’ comprehension of racial politics.

Australian, British and Indian newspapers contribute significantly to this research and due to the absence of living participants they buttress principal research contentions. Australian newspapers have been located through Trove and at the Melbourne Cricket Club, the State Library of Victoria, the Anandji Dossa reference library at the Cricket Club of India (CCI), the Teen Murti Library (Mumbai), the Mitchell library (NSW) and Cricket New South Wales.¹⁵ Newspaper articles have also been located in archives of players (Leather, Alexander, Ryder, Mohammad Nisar and Mamood Salahuddin).¹⁶ Some publications editorialize from a personalized perspective, however the majority of the Australian press reportage voiced an analogous assessment of the tour. British and Indian newspapers provide additional information with a slightly alternate perspective that identifies transnational variations in the perceived role of cricket across the Empire and differing attitudes to the Australian tour.¹⁷

The unofficial tour to India received similar, if not more, Australian press coverage than the sanctioned Test tour taking place simultaneously in South Africa. Lines of communication between Australia and India, inspired by the financial necessity of trade resulted in an established dialogue between the two countries. The exotic appeal of India contributed to the extensive press coverage and fulfilled the readers’ expectations of the subcontinent.

Despite a global growth in the popularity of sport, Australian researcher Daryl Adair laments that an all-encompassing acceptance of an academic interrogation of it is still rare (2009, 405, 406). Holden also observes the lack of recognition of sport scholarship, however he perceives it in an optimistic light and proclaims that, ‘fortunately, there are signs that postcolonial scholarship’s neglect of sport is coming to an end’ (2008, 346). Holden identifies the necessity of such research and describes sport as ‘an imperial cultural phenomenon, adopted and adapted by both white settlers and the colonised, and surviving after decolonisation’ (2008). Holden concludes that cricket demands to be critiqued through scholarly investigation as it presents as an apposite ‘example of (post)colonial hybridity at its most … well, hybrid’ (2008). This publication embraces the frustrations of Holden and Adair and argues that sport is an ideal conduit to reveal broader societal values and presents the 1935/36 as an apt example for investigation.

This volume employs cultural theories to explicate the machinations of the establishment of Indian-Australian cricket and to comprehend the neoteric role of cricket itself in the fast-approaching age of professionalism. It fills the palpable gap in scholarship by presenting the 1935/36 tour as an episode that aptly critiques Australia’s developing relationship with late-colonial India in cultural and sporting spheres. It interrogates the growing potency of cricket to reflect and facilitate social change and details the tour’s demonstrative opposition to the prevailing racial and social dynamic that was previously at the core of the Empire’s phenomenal success. The pioneering political and cultural foundation of the tour has been overlooked and this research repositions it to its rightful position in history.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Maharajah and Maharaja are interchangeable spellings. I have elected to use the latter unless quoting directly.

2. In 2007, Peter Young – Public Relations Manager at Cricket Australia (the successor to the Australian Cricket Board and earlier the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket) – claimed that the Indian-Australia cricket competition was vital to the survival of the global game. Scheduling masterminded the two countries meeting in all forms of the game (Test, One day and Twenty20) annually.

3. Australian Kerry Packer devised World Series Cricket (1977–79) in reaction to the conservative and archaic foundations of contemporary cricket. The establishment of the competition changed the course of cricket making it a commercially viable, professional business.

4. For the purpose of this publication I will use the term Anglo-Indian to describe individuals of British descent born or living in the Indian subcontinent. The exception to this non-European ruling was the Madras Presidency team which comprised four Europeans: Johnstone, Southby, Ward and Godfrey (Roy 1947). Muthiah observes that in 1927 the European XI was virtually the Madras Cricket team (1998). The complete Indianization of the Madras team did not take place until the 1950s (1998).

5. Taking place in 1927, the first Indian radio broadcast promoted the game by disseminating cricket news and scores across the vast country (Pinkerton 2008, 167).

6. Warner co-managed of the English team (with Richard Palairet).

7. Baloo belonged to the Dalit (also known as the ‘Untouchable’) caste and was one of the first less-privileged individuals to make a significant impact on sport and politics in India.

8. It is impossible to determine the background of the all the Indians who competed against the Australian team, however Cashman reveals that those who went on to play Test cricket originated from diverse social backgrounds (1980, 173–191). Guha also observes the communal and social diversity of cricket in the early twentieth century (2002, 105–108).

9. Patrons, Players and the Crowd: The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket was published in 1948 by Orient Longman Limited, an Indian company established following partition, and included an introduction written by ex-Test cricketer Vijay Merchant. The Indian division of Macmillan published Docker’s publication.

10. Brian Stoddart is another Australian historian who has written extensively on sport in Asia.

11. Martin Bladen Hawke (1860–1938), known by his title Lord Hawke, was a Yorkshire amateur cricketer and an enthusiastic administrator of the sport. He was a strict disciplinarian and staunchly upheld the traditional values of cricket.

12. Research indicates that possibly Oxenham was replaced by Alexander during the game.

13. In 2008 I located two unpublished manuscripts written by Hunter Hendry at the Bradman museum in Bowral, New South Wales. These are undated and unpaginated. I estimate the first document was written in the late 1970s and the later version in the mid 1980s following the publication of A cameo from the past – the life and times of H.S.T.L Hendry by Ronald Caldwell in 1984. Hendry states that his motivation to write the second draft (from which quotations are extracted) was to correct the inaccuracies of the Caldwell publication. Hendry wrote, ‘I really disown the book because it is full of errors, statistics and matches which were never mentioned in the 150 pages of foolscap’.

Some confusion surrounds Oscar Wendell Bill’s name. Birth records nominate his surname as Bill, middle name as Wendell and first name as Oscar. This has been substantiated by his entry in the Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket (Franks 1996, 61). Some press articles and cricket records call him Wendell Bill (as he was colloquially known) and Indian articles suggest that his surname was a hyphenated Wendell-Bill. I will subsequently identify him as Bill unless I am quoting directly except in reference to For the Love of the Game which has been catalogued in the State Library of New South Wales under Wendell Bill, likewise his archive at Cricket NSW. These references appear in the bibliography under Wendell Bill.

14. All articles were written during the tour or immediately following. The number of individuals writing for the Australian press reveals the popularity of the tour narrative and the East as a topic of interest.

15. Anandji Dossa was a cricket statistician who donated his cricket library and the scrapbooks he had diligently collated from 1932 until the 1990s to the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai. The scrapbooks reflect Dossa’s commitment to cricket and the recording, and collating, of history. On his death the BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel paid tribute to Dossa, terming his contribution to the game ‘extraordinary’ (cricinfo http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/783505.html). Dossa’s 1935/36 scrapbook reflects his commitment to the tour as he re-typed Macartney’s columns for the Hindu. The entries come to around 85 foolscap pages of typed text and reveal Dossa’s allegiance to Indian cricket and Australia’s contribution to it.

16. Nisar’s name is commonly misspelt as Nissar. The name was spelt with a SS by the British and has become an accepted spelling however the family still use the original spelling as I will for the purpose of this publication.

17. These articles are located in public and private archives in Britain and India and are located in the newspaper bibliography.