by Arunabha Sengupta
Cricket is the only game the gods play themselves —said JM Barrie.
Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. Barrie one of the most successful dramatists. And Barrie who created a team, the exotically named Allahakbarries, that virtually represented the pinnacle of the curious correlation between the cricket bat and the writer’s pen.
The Allahakbarries were a reminder of what AA Milne called ‘a world in which imaginative youth could be happy without feeling ashamed of its happiness.’
Barrie himself wrote a small booklet titled Allahakbarries CC, published in 1893, republished in 1899, and later reprinted in 1950.
In the book he put himself down as captain. Barrie (Capt.) An incomparable captain. The life and soul of his side. A treat to see him tossing the penny. Once took a wicket.
Of his own bowling, Barrie said: “If I didn't like the look of a ball I could go and fetch it before it reached the other batsman & bowl it again". At other times, he said, after delivering the ball he would go and sit on the turf at mid-off, and wait for it to reach the other end —which it sometimes did.
His batting was not much better. The 1899 edition of his book notes his being clean-bowled by the American actress Mary Anderson in the 1897 "test" against the village of Broadway, in the Cotswolds.
He was no great skipper either—neither a sturdy cricketer like WG Grace nor charismatic leader like Captain Hook. Small, frail and sensitive, awkward in his movements, pathetically unskilled at the game, a Soctsman to boot, he was logically as far from the game as humanly possible. But, as Jerome K Jerome put it, ‘he was a great cricketer, at heart.’
It was he who persuaded the likes of Jerome K Jerome, PG Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle, EW Hornung, EV Lucas, AA Milne and many others to abandon their fear of coming across as ridiculous and play for a team that was quite often farcical.
Also making up the team were journalists, African explorers, big -game hunters, cartoonists, politicians, lawyers, actors, soldiers, the occasional first-class cricketer (Hesketh Hesketh-Pritchard being the primary example, an international footballer (George Cotterill) and a missionary (Frederick Meyrick-Jones).
He even tried to rope in, albeit (thankfully) without success, men like GK Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling and HG Wells.
If there had been no JM Barrie, the Machiavellian schemer, scorer, anarchist and organiser of this improvised team, this most ridiculous and most famous of Edwardian wandering cricket teams would not have existed.
His creation Peter Pan became a natural and pervasive Edwardian god: playful, wild outdoor hero who never ages, combining in one image the delights of rural and childhood retreat. For Barrie cricket represented the exact same thing. He and his Allahakbarries became Peter Pan and the lost boys.
The Allahakbarries represented a conscious rebellion against the rationalisation of sport and Barrie in particular dreaded the idea of taking it too seriously. Barrie, in fact, would have given much to be good at cricket, but he was far less than good. Instead of giving up playing cricket because of that, he just turned the game into frivolity. “We never cared whether we won or lost. We played the game.”
They played for fun and often, between 1887 and the outbreak of the Great War. In doing so they came in contact with giants of the game, from WG Grace, to Plum Warner, to Don Bradman.
And then Peter Pan’s lost boys grew up. Rather, much in line with Barrie’s fears. In fact, they grew old, they died. After the War Barrie restricted himself to talking about the game and about the Allahakbarries. Sometimes he picked up a ball and bowled on the cricket pitch, wearing his grey Homburg hat with a black band, and a flapping scarf round his neck.
During Bradman’s 1930 exploits, Barrie addressed the Australian cricketers during a dinner. “[The Australians will return] to tremendous rejoicings. The team will be taken to hotels and public places and feasted —all with the exception of Mr Bradman. He has carried this plan of his not knowing how to get out to such an extent that he now cannot get out of anything. He won’t be able to get out of the ship when all the others are merry and bright. We now leave him pacing the deck, a gloomy figure.”
It was quite prophetic. Bradman indeed could not ‘get out’ of the fame that his herculean scoring earned him, and often could not make merry with his teammates.
Barrie passed away in 1937.
When his booklet Allahakbarries CC was reprinted in 1950, Bradman wrote the foreword.
JM Barrie was born on 9 May 1860.