by Arunabha Sengupta
Summer 1896.
When the Price of Wales presented him with a cigar, Australian captain Harry Trott simply smoked it … to the surprise of those who thought a royal souvenir worth keeping.
It was Trott who originated a persistent myth that workers at the Sheffield steelworks generated extra plumes of smoke when the Australians were batting at nearby Bramall Lane.
After the successful England tour, the Australians visited North America. When they played the Gentlemen of Philadelphia, a local reporter asked Trott why Australians did not play baseball. He replied:
"Running around in circles makes us giddy.”
On the way back from the 1896 tour, he gathered cigar butts on board the Mariposa. Before disembarking in Auckland, he distributed them to his team claiming it was the one given to him by the Prince of Wales. He asked the recipients not to tell others in case it provoked jealousy.
Trott was also extremely fond of hats; a teammate described him as "... the only man I have seen who, in the nude, had to have a hat on his head"
However, his joviality was not just entertaining. It had deep impact on the history of the game.
During that same 1896 tour of England, the home Test teams were still chosen by the home county on whose ground the match was being contested.
The magical and mysterious mastery of KS Ranjitsinhji at the wicket already had England in a spell. However, he was not chosen for the Lord’s Test. England cricket mandarin, Lord Harris, a former Governor of Bombay questioned Ranji’s qualifications to play for the country and the propriety of him rubbing shoulders with English cricketers in a Test match. “Migratory birds” he was called.
When the teams moved to Old Trafford for the second Test, the selection committee under the less racially prejudiced Monkey Hornby decided to include Ranji in the team. Ranji himself, apprehensive and cautious, wanted the England management to check with the Australian side. He would play only if the tourists did not have a problem with the Indian prince playing for England.
Hornby approached the Australian captain. The genial and affable Trott agreed at once saying it would be a delight.
“If eleven Indians came to England and learnt cricket, and were good enough, the dear old mother-country might have a coloured English representative team,” he is reputed to have said.
Ranji scored 62 and 154 not out on debut.
Had it something to do with Harry Trott having some amount of coloured heritage? Not so well known is the fact that his great-grandmother, Elizabeth ‘Betsey’ McGilvray had been a manumitted slave in Antigua, born of an African slave woman and a white man from the plantation.
Yes, Trott had mixed blood. It is also true that he was the nicest of blokes, so his decision could have been simply the goodness of heart.
As Wisden wrote in his obituary: “The personal popularity that Harry Trott enjoyed ... was remarkable. Perhaps no Australian captain before or since was liked so much by his opponents … In managing his team, he owed much to his equable temper and innate tact. Knowing all the little weaknesses and vanities of the men under his command, he believed in a policy of kindly encouragement. Never outwardly disturbed by the state of the game, he could inspire even the most despondent with something of his own cheerfulness. He played cricket in the best possible spirit, taking victory and defeat with the same calm philosophy.”
Harry Trott was a good batsman, an excellent fielder and a useful change bowler sending down leg-breaks. However, there were better cricketers than him … brother Albert Trott was far more talented and it is a shame that he did not get as many chances and had to ply his trade for Middlesex.
As Wisden put it: “Australia has produced greater cricketers than Harry Trott, but in his day he held a place in the front rank of the world's famous players.”
For a living Trott worked as a postman and a mail sorter.
Sadly he spent much of his mid-life in a mental asylum, suffering from what is now known as depressive psychosis. He died at the age of 51 from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Harry Trott was born on 5 Aug 1866.