Tweet

Arunabha Sengupta

3 Feb, 15 tweets, 7 min read

Thread:
1991. Clive Rice was apprehensive about possible reactions when he toured India with his men.
However, what happened was beyond his wildest dreams. From the airport to the hotel, streets were lined with people who had turned up to welcome them.

Unlike widely believed, however, that was not the first time SA cricketers played in India.

1921. A team of soccer and cricket players made up of SA Indians from Durban, Natal, visited India on a two-month tour. Christopher’s Contingent.

They played 14 games of football across India, and 2 games of cricket in Calcutta. In between they also met Gandhi.

In cricket, they drew vs Presidency College. The following Sunday they lost a game to the historic Mohun Bagan Club by 8 wkts.
After the 2nd match skipper Billy Subban & vice-captain Baboolal Maharaj were persuaded by Mohun Bagan to turn out for them in a game against Balligunge

This actually disproves another long-held view that the traditional Mohun Bagan club did not recruit any foreign player till the Nigerian footballer Chima Okerie played for them in 1991.

@Mohun_Bagan

Established in 1889, @Mohun_Bagan had an almost Yorkshire-like policy against foreign players.

@YorkshireCCC

Yorkshire, as we know, famously held on to the policy till 1992 before modifying it to allow Sachin Tendulkar to join their ranks @YorkshireCCC @sachin_rt

@sumitganguly14

In Apartheid: A Point To Cover I mentioned Mohun Bagan playing Subban and Maharaj in Jan 1922. @sumitganguly14 & I stumbled on to it during research.

amazon.co.uk/dp/9492203030

However, the importance of this & several other facts escaped most readers.
Non-Anglo non-Aussie cricketing facts often fail to register in the domain of cricket history. Long room windows are still jammed.

Just think of the uproar it would have caused if someone found that Yorkshire had recruited a foreigner in the 1920s. Perhaps someone like this gentleman.

@Mohun_Bagan

Well, @Mohun_Bagan is not only the oldest existing football club and one of the most prestigious clubs of India. It was the first to overcome a British side when they beat East York in the IFA Shield final 1911. The same year as the Delhi Durbar.

The cricket team of Mohun Bagan has been represented by the likes of Kohli, Srinath, Ganguly, Vinoo Mankad, Lala Amarnath, Dattu Phadkar, Mushtaq Ali, Vijay Hazare, Subhash Gupte, Madhav Apte, Vijay Manjrekar.
It is kind of a big deal.

With traditional cricket libraries overflowing with daily additions to the club histories of weekend English cricketers, this sort of unawareness when it comes to history of other clubs around the world is quite symptomatic of the incredible skew that exists in cricket history.

@SachinAzharCT

In @SachinAzharCT @ovshake42 & I have repeated the story of the 2 SA Indians & @Mohun_Bagan There are magical nuggets in the #history of cricket, even non-English non-Australian #cricket We hope the world wakes up to this soon
Quite a few in this book amazon.co.uk/dp/1785318195/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @senantix

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

3 Feb

Thread:
Bobby Simpson born 3 Feb 1936.
3664 runs as an opening batsman, averaging 55.51.
#cricket #onthisday

Take a cut-off of 3000 runs for openers, and this is the order of merit - Sutcliffe, 4522 at 61.10; Hutton 6721 at 56.47; Hobbs 5130 at 56.37; and then there is Simpson, way ahead of the rest of the field.

There are Amiss, Hayden, etc who follow after this ...
If the bar is reduced to 2000 runs, Bruce Mitchell and Bill Woodfull come in ... Right, if you are missing a name you need to keep looking further down the list ..

Read 11 tweets

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

29 Jan

Thread:
Andy Roberts, born #onthisday 1951.
He used to walk back to his mark, the eyes cold and calculating, the face expressionless and half hidden behind the beard, the shoulders hunched and alert, the mien brooding and ruthless.

Then he would turn and rush in, building up speed along the way, exploding as he reached the crease. His arm would come over, at right angles to his torso, but would reach a height as his shoulder dipped. He would glide along his right toecap, hit the crease with his full weight.

The leather streaked out of his hand in a blur of red, zooming towards the batsman at a rate rarely matched. The natural movement from off to leg, but sometimes away swing would flummox the best. Often the ball would lift sharply putting the batsmen in immense physical peril.

Read 19 tweets

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

28 Jan

Thread:
At the precise moment when Monty Noble was being born in Sydney’s Haymarket, #onthisday 1873, a military band passed by playing loud music as if to herald his arrival in the world. Mother Maria immediately declared that her eighth and last child would be famous.
#cricket

He was called ‘Mary Anne’ by the Sydney crowd because of his initials. His teammates called him ‘Boots’ because of the massive footwear in which he took the field.
History, however, cannot afford a flippant nickname for Montague Alfred Noble the cricketer.

A top-order batsman of pedigree, Noble could swing the ball prodigiously. With a grip borrowed from visiting American baseball players, he pinched the seam between his thumb & forefinger. The result was a medium-paced out-swinger carrying the threat of cutting back off the seam.

Read 16 tweets

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

27 Jan

Thread:
Daniel Vettori (born #onthisday 1979) came in as a 18-year-old with scholarly looks ... and made his way to becoming a senior statesman of #Cricket

It was a long, long journey.
By the time he called it a day, half his life had been spent on the cricket ground.

There were changes on the way.
The long locks fell away early, the boyish angularity of the cheeks was filled up with the heaviness of experience; the glasses too changed from the light metal frames to rather forbidding, wide spectacles.

Read 21 tweets

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

26 Jan

Thread:
In a team full of hardened men, who played the game with scary ruthlessness and earned the tag The Ugly Australians with deserving valour and pride, Kim Hughes (born 26 Jan 1954) arrived as a breath of fresh air. #cricket #onthisday #kimhughes

Effervescent, lovable, as charming in his game and as in his brilliant smile, with clean shaven boyish looks and golden locks on which sunbeams seemed to ripple, he perpetually looked the baby of the team — even when he led the side through the tumultuous late 70s and early 80s.

And he even went where no Australian captain had ever gone before, walking into the dressing room of the opponents and apologising after his pace bowler had unleashed a beamer.

Read 15 tweets

Arunabha Sengupta

@senantix

6 Jan

@therealkapildev

Thread:
Happy Birthday @therealkapildev
Kapil Dev was always present, in every cricket-crazy consciousness of India of my boyhood

#onthisday #cricket

One just had to close one’s eyes & the graceful, lithe run up could be seen, leap before delivery, head tilted to the left, right hand close to the chest left raised in front of the face, and then the left arm extended outwards as the right came around to send down the delivery

All through the 1980s with more cricket being telecast one found almost every cricket pitch, from coaching centres to school games, full of bowling actions that were almost exact replicas of the great man’s. Yes, Indians could bowl pace, successfully, and Kapil had shown the way

Read 12 tweets

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!