November 7 (1917) will forever be associated with the Bolshevik Revolution.
Whether it was good or bad is something for domain experts to decide.
But there is little doubt that it marked the beginning of decline of cricket in Russia.
Here is something (not much) on that.
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St Petersburg used to have a cricket club in at least 1865. By 1895 there were four.
Nicholas I (monarch from 1796 to 1855) definitely saw a cricket match at Chatham.
The British Royal Yacht Osborne haled at the St Petersburg dockyard in 1875.
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The crew played a match against the British expatriates (after explaining this unusual activity to the police, who thought they were a "force of warriors").
In the 1880s, St Petersburg used to host an annual match (British diplomats vs textile mills managers and foremen).
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As late as in the early 1900s, Charles Hardinge (Ambassador to Russia from 1904) received a letter from St Petersburg on the lines that "everything is proceeding as normal, the mills are working and the English foremen had their game of cricket yesterday."
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But the most ardent cricket-lover of them all was Nicholas II.
Here is a photograph of him visiting the Dickoya Maskeliya Cricket Club in Ceylon, three years before he was crowned Emperor of Russia.
(source: Facebook)
In fact, so big a fan was Nicholas that he had a pitch in the Peterhof Palace premises.
That was it.
Random:
FS Ashley Cooper wrote that the first cricket laws in Russian had the pitch length at 12 feet (not yards) and disallowed any fielder within 40 feet of the batsman.
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In July 1994, The Explorers (a British team) played a match against the MCC (the M stands for Moscow).
Wisden puts this as the first "formal match" in Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution.
The strip was originally a croquet pitch.
Broom handles were used for stumps.
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In 2008, Tim Rice took a cricket team to Russia and played a match against British diplomats and expats. Allan Lamb was part of it.
Cricket Russia opened its first academy in Moscow in 2012.
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Kyle Christie made his international debut on this day, 2016, in an ODI for Hong Kong against Papua New Guinea.
His was the most 2010s debut possible.
But before narrating this, I must acknowledge @pramz for the interview and photograph (and for how good a colleague he was).
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Had he been born twenty, or even ten, years earlier, Christie would probably have not played international cricket.
On July 25, 2016, Hong Kong Cricket put up an advertisement on their Facebook page, inviting all interested Hong Kong-borns living outside the country.
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Christie was only three when he had left Hong Kong with his parents.
He had been doing a decent job as a seam bowler in club cricket in Perth. Now he responded.
They liked what they saw: "They got back in touch with me and invited me out for a trial."
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On this day, 1931, Don Bradman did something at Blackheath that seems unthinkable even by his standards.
He slammed a hundred in 18 minutes, inside three overs.
True, these were eight-ball overs, but Bradman faced only 22 of these.
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Blackheath had invited Bradman and Wendell Bill (colleague of Bradman's at NSW) to play for them against Lithgow.
A reasonably large crowd had gathered for the match, which was played on a malthoid pitch.
Bradman wrote: "I had never seen a pitch with a malthoid top.
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"I'm still not sure if it was laid on a bitumen base or on concrete but it was perfectly flat and very smooth … The pitch proved ideal for batting in that the ball came off it at a gentle pace and with a particularly uniform and predictable bounce."
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Born on this day, 1917, Sudangsu 'Montu'/'Mantu' Banerjee was also one of three S Banerjees to do well on Test debut and never play another Test match.
A gifted swing bowler, Banerjee thrived in Eden Gardens, especially in the afternoon breeze. He was also, er – a philosopher.
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Banerjee played only 26 First-Class matches across 13 years, claiming 92 wickets at 23.28 – remarkable numbers by any standards.
In his only Test he took 4/120 and 1/61, and held 3 catches.
But now for the philosophical bit, my source of which is mostly the late Madhav Apte.
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Banerjee used to compare life with cricket, for both are contests between good and evil (the logic of this eludes me).
He also believed that a cricket ball is red because is it not the red cherry with which the bowler tempts the batsman, temptation the batsman turns away from?
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