REVIEWS. Among cricket lovers there is some contention as to who is the
greatest writer on the game. The majority (with whom I — and Ramachandra
Guha —.
REVIEWS
Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, Picador, London, 2002, pp. xv + 496, paperback. RRP $22. Among cricket lovers there is some contention as to who is the greatest writer on the game. The majority (with whom I — and Ramachandra Guha — concur) would vote for Sir Neville Cardus, primarily on the ground of the elegance of his prose. A sizeable minority, however, including Gideon Haigh and Sir Derek Birley favour C. L. R. James, singling out Beyond a Boundary because of its sustained concentration on political and social factors. On the evidence of A Corner of a Foreign Field, Ramachandra Guha is well worthy of being considered number three in the pantheon of cricket writers.
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VOLUME 20 no 1 NOVEMBER 2003
Certainly this is the greatest book on Indian cricket — rivalled, but not equalled, by Mihir Bose's monumental history and Richard Cashman's Patrons, Players and the Crowd. Guha states that the Indian historical tradition is oral rather than written. To a large extent this is true of Indian writing in the English language. But Guha himself demonstrates that there is a huge amount of material, untapped by Anglophobes, in books, newspapers and club records, that is hidden in the many languages and dialects of the Indian sub-continent. The multi-lingual Guha has unearthed a mass of fascinating material from these sources, especially in Gujarati, Malayalam, Hindi and Urdu. This fact alone would render this book of unparalleled value to English readers. But among its other merits is the original, and absorbing structure of the book. Guha does not attempt a chronological survey. Rather he divides the book into four parts, each dealing with a fundamental aspect of Indian culture, and the impact that it has had on the development in its cricket or vice versa. They are: Race, Caste, Religion and Nationalism. Part I examines the origins of the game, which began in earnest in Bombay. The Parsis, a well-to-do minority of disciples of Zoroaster (Zarathustra), won an engrossing and paradoxical struggle to use the Bombay Gymkhana for a British game, despite the protestations of the British players of an Indian sport, polo! Guha, who pulls no punches when he deems it necessary, berates the lukewarm, sycophantic hypocrisy displayed by Lord Harris towards the Parsi cricketers, during his Presidency of Bombay. The liquor drunk in a single year in his home in Poona (he refused even to live in Bombay itself!) testifies to Harris's 'unfittedness for his job' (p. 67). Part II (Caste) centres on a remarkable Hindu harijan. His name would almost certainly be unknown to most Australians but Guha regards him as one of India's greatest cricketers. Palwankar Baloo, born in 1875, belonged to a caste that lay at the bottom of the Hindu social hierarchy, the leather makers. The humiliations that he suffered, especially from the higher caste of Hindus, the Brahmins, are movingly told. If he wished to wash his face at the lunch and tea intervals, an Untouchable servant had to take a kettle into a corner of the field to pour water from it! Nevertheless, Baloo's talents demanded that he represent the Hindu Gymkhana when, eventually, matches against the Parsis (and later, the Mohammedans, Europeans and 'The Rest') were established. Thus cricket, in this instance, led the way to some degree of mitigation of the 'Scheduled Castes' whose cause Gandhi eventually took up. Gandhi's negative attitude to cricket is taken up in Part III (Religion). Strangely, the Mahatma hated the game, and especially the Bombay Pentangular, which, in his view, encouraged sectarianism. By contrast, the much-reviled Muslim leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whose recalcitrance led
REVIEWS
to the Partition of India in 1947, enjoyed the game. Gandhi was partially successful in causing the suspension of the Pentangular for a few years. But it was resurrected, and far exceeded the Ranji Trophy in importance as a first-class tournament until its eventual demise in the 1950s. Guha's preoccupation throughout this Part is with the extent to which cricket had fostered or thwarted a sense of Indian communalism. His summary is a quotation from the nineteenth century historian, Shaporjeee Sorabjee, 'To expect all political differences to disappear or all available self-interest to be forgone upon the institution of cricket relations is to live in a fool's paradise' (p. 318). The final part of the book concentrates on the history of Indian cricket since independence. It examines the hostile relations of India and Pakistan on the cricket field, as well as in the wider arena. Of course, there is much more to this book than a mere summary of its major themes. Guha is as witty as he is scholarly and polemical. The description of the India v Pakistan World Cup match at Old Trafford, for instance, is an hilarious account of the author's experience in Cardus's 'city of the Halle concerts and the Guardian newspaper'. The police, 'fearing the first cricket riot in England' (p. 419) greatly overreacted; The Times 'cloaked its anxiety in bravado'. 'Even when bullets are in the air across Kashmir, the balls kept flying at Old Trafford'. Guha comments, 'To imagine what [Cardus] would have made of this battle in 1999 in 1999 beggared relief (p. 420). As the Indian squad prepares to take on the mighty Australians, it behooves serious cricket-lovers to make an effort to understand the forces and conditions that conspired to make this quintessential Anglo-Saxon pursuit the national game of India, and in its wake transformed Indian culture and society. Short of a cricketing visit to India itself (a very worthwhile pursuit as I can testify) nothing could enlighten this task more than a careful reading of this extraordinary work.
J. Neville Turner President-Elect, Australian Society for Sports History
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