Tag: sports: nationalism and commerce

It consists of two pieces, the blade which is made out of the wood of the willow tree and the handle which is made out of cane. Unlike golf and tennis, cricket has refused to remake its tools with industrial or man-made materials: plastic, fibreglass and metal have been firmly rejected.  Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee tried to play an innings with an aluminium bat, only to have it outlawed by the umpires. 

Cricket’s connection with a rural past can be seen in the length of a Test match. Originally, cricket matches had no time limit. The game went on for as long as it took to bowl out a side twice. In the same way, cricket’s vagueness about the size of a cricket ground is a result of its village origins. Cricket was originally played on country commons, unfenced land that was public property. 

Nearly 500 years ago, cricket developed in rural England out of several stick and ball games. Till the 18^th century, cricket bats were curved like hockey sticks. The game was originally played on unfenced land in English villages with no defined boundaries.

The MCC’s revision of the laws brought in a series of changes in the game that occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century. The weight of the ball was limited to between 5½  to 5¾ ounces, and the width of the bat to four inches. 

 The early history of Indian first class cricket, teams were not organised on geographical principles and it was not till 1932 that a national team was given the right to represent India in a Test match. Cricket in colonial India was organised on the principle of race and religion. 

 When the West Indies won its first Test series against England in 1950, it was celebrated as a national achievement, as a way of demonstrating that West Indians were the equals of white Englishmen. 

Len Hutton was an English Test cricketer, who played for Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England in the years around the Second World War as an opening batsman. He was described by Wisden Cricketer's Almanack as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.  It was not till the 1930s that the English Test team was led by a professional, the Yorkshire batsman, Len Hutton.

While British imperial officials brought the game to the colonies, they made little effort to spread the game, especially in colonial territories where the subjects of empire were mainly non-white, such as India and the West Indies. The Afro-Caribbean population was discouraged from participating in organised club cricket, which remained dominated by white plantation owners and their servants. 

The first record we have of cricket being played in India is from 1721, an account of recreational cricket played by English sailors in Cambay.  The first Indian club, the Calcutta Cricket Club, was established in 1792. Through the eighteenth century, cricket in India was almost wholly a sport played by British military men and civil servants in all-white clubs and gymkhanas. 

 The first Indian community to start playing the game was the small community of Zoroastrians, the Parsis. They came in close contact with the British because of their interest in trade. Also, Parsis were the first ones to westernise themselves. The Parsis founded the first Indian cricket club, the Oriental Cricket Club in Bombay in 1848.