by Arunabha Sengupta
‘Where the English language is unspoken there can be no real cricket, which is to say that the Americans have never excelled at the game,’ wrote cricket’s eternal snob Neville Cardus.
Like most of Cardus pronouncements, we are expected to take it as a sterling exhibition of language and witticism. In the process, we are also expected to ignore the insufferable patronisation to the point of near-abuse, the blissful ignorance of Melville-Poe-Twain-Faulkner and the many other splendours of American-English culture, and also the complete denial of historical manipulations that actually resulted in such a state of things cricketing. One can almost find the roots of the ‘banter, not discriminatory abuse’ culture from this one statement.
But then Cardus was never for getting his facts straight, and that callous trait has been converted into the endearing – even enviable – by hagiographers down the line. In a culture where rhetoric finds a much more elevated place than facts, this is an important trait. It is an indispensible tool to create one’s own history.
A World Cup being co-hosted by the USA – a country we have always been led to believe were baseball-playing cricket agnostic – is a great leveller. Yes, the two best sides of the tournament proceeded undefeated to the final. Yes, the final was a cracker of a contest. Yes, the best bowler of the world brought the champions back into the reckoning from the very brink of hopelessness. Yes, the incredible catch in the final over will be recalled for a long, long time. Yet, one of the major positives of the World Cup was redressal of the balance, a lop-sided elitism that had crept into the way that the game had been run for ages.
Cricket was once big in the United States – at least in Philadelphia, the cradle of the game in the vast land. The first international cricket match was, in fact, a three-day affair played between a visiting Canadian team against USA at St George’s Club Ground in New York. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Philadelphians was a formidable team. Bart King was one of the premier fast bowlers of the world, one of the first proponents of swing bowling. Tours to North America by the English sides and return tours by Philadelphians to the British Isles were quite regular. In 1908, Bart King led the Philadelphians to the British Isles and captured 87 wickets at 11.01. The team also had the Australian dentist-cricketer HB ‘Ranji’ Hordern. They won four and lost six of the 10 first-class matches and even beat MCC at Lord’s. That was better than most visiting South African sides. On their way back they played three matches in Jamaica.
Then something very striking took place in 1909. The formation of the Imperial Cricket Conference – the same body that has evolved to the modern-day International Cricket Council. Abe Bailey, the South African diamond and gold tycoon and mastermind behind the formation of ICC, was fanatical about the administrative body being limited to the British Empire. In fact, Bailey, the basest of racists, wanted to keep it white – England, Australia and South Africa. However, eventually the colonies – West Indies, India and later Pakistan came along. And as a result, the cricketing development of United States of America came to a halt. As we grew up, the Cardusian brainwashing often led us to believe that the ‘crass’ Americans were not refined enough to excel in a sport as elevated as cricket. It is all part of cricket’s incredible elitism.
And thanks to this nature of birth and nurturing through the decades, cricket was hardly spread. If we look closely, India played their first Test match in 1932. Fifty years later, Sri Lanka made their first Test appearance in 1982. In between only Pakistan was admitted into the Test fold, that too essentially because of a new country being created with the diplomatic explosiveness of the Partition. Essentially, until 1993 when England and Australia – two founder-members of ICC – were stripped of their veto power, inclusion into the elite group was arbitrary and a whimsical, a function of elitism.
That is why only eight teams participated in the first four ‘World Cups’ – extended to five with readmission of old crony South Africa in 1993.
The last 30 years have seen Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ireland come in. More importantly, cricket in the associate nations have become more regularised.
This World Cup has seen 20 teams – which actually lends weight to the ‘World’ before the ‘Cup’. Oman, Papua New Guinea, Netherlands, Nepal and Scotland have participated. The United States have not only co-hosted the Cup, they have reached the quarter final. Afghanistan, where only 5% of the population speak English (take that Neville), have a Test win under their belt, have beaten England in the 50-over World Cup and Australia in the T20 World Cup.
USA has returned, and are on the verge of starting their own league.
I hear echoes of the twitter and meme jokes – the USA national team is nothing but an Indian H1-B side. Perhaps. However, there is something modern called a Global Village. Also, there is something age-old called migration. A country in the southernmost tip of Africa was represented until very recent times by a small group of white men – majorly settlers from England, some from the Netherlands, and their descendants. This is just another such occurrence – this time due to principles of globalisation rather than barbaric segregation.
With this, one hopes the ways of running the sport returns a full circle and becomes more and more inclusive.
(This article was first published in Bengali in the Sunday edition of Ei Samay on 7 July 2024)