Bat, Ball & Bharat: India’s Cricketing Revolution - Part 1
Cricket in India – a rebellion against the British became a source of joy for the entire country!
The game of Cricket, like any other major sport around the world, has its own history of emergence. Started in early 1400s in Britain, over the century became one of the most popular sports around the world.
While English sailors are often credited with the earliest invention of the sport, but many academic research shows proof that cricket's exposure in India was more nuanced. A broader and bigger British colonial project, where sports were used as a means of social interaction and control.
Just consider this, a game that was introduced on the Indian soil by the Britishers, for their own pleasure and entertainment in the 1900s, grew under the skin of Indians so well that we outplayed and outperformed them in the sport of their creation.
India as a cricket team got a kick start and played its first match ever in 1932, against England at the Lord’s Cricket ground. The team was led by CK Nayudu, who performed well on their behalf. With the likes of Mohammad Nissar, Amar Singh, they lost the only test match played at Lord’s at that time; the match was concluded in three days.
Albeit we lost the match, we learned one thing: that this sport of cricket will be our redemption and will pave the way for millions of indian kids to dare and dream of playing cricket without any professional equipment to access. At a time when freedom of the country dwells in the dark roads of uncertainty and the blood of innocent lives. A ball was a faraway purchase, yet each wooden stick was imagined as a ball that was hit by another stick, imagining it as a bat, and the streets were filled with the noise of happiness searched from the small things.
This was just the beginning of a great history in making in the world of cricket, as domestically in India, the love and support for the game was increasing rapidly like an F1 car. Formation of BCCI came into existence, and Ranji Trophy was created as a tournament for domestic players to showcase their skills and perform to compete against each other, with every player representing his own state and playing with all they’ve just to be selected as a soldier to bleed blue and represent India.
Then we tasted victory, our first ever small but sweet success, came against England, and a series win against the newly separated Pakistan in 1952. This was a landmark victory for us because in the coming years, we came out as a team to be feared on home soil. Legends like Nawab Mohammad Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi aka Tiger Pataudi, hailed as one of the greatest ever to play cricket, along with Gundappa Vishwanath, Bishan Singh Bedi, EAS Prasanna, the future of Indian cricket looked as beautiful and full of hope, just like our Tricolour country flag.
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- Sameep Mishra