The Parsi boys who beat England at its own game

The Parsee team that toured England in 1886 and won only one out of 28 matches New research by historian Dr Prashant Kidambi reveals that this team came from a dominant cricket club in Mumbai named the Parsee Cricket Club which was playing against European teams from the late 1860s onwards Pic Courtesy Pageant of Cricket by David FrithThe historic Parsi cricket tour of England 1886 ndash the one in which the first team to go from India won only one of 28 matches ndash is a welldocumented one A group of elite Parsi cricketers set for Britain to play a summer sport enjoyed by the colonising British The tour was mainly selffunded and the team was captained by Dhunjishaw Patel a fast underarm bowlerNew research mainly because of recently digitised newspapers and journals at the British Library throws light on this team as part of the Parsee Cricket Club Dr Prashant Kidambi associate professor in colonial urban history at the University of Leicester has been researching this club and its central place in the making of cricket history in Mumbai People have been using the more general term of the Parsee tour but it was this particular club from which the team went to England This was the club that was defeating the English teams on grounds here in Mumbai says KidambiKidambi was in town over the weekend for a twoday conference titled Power Public Culture and Identities Towards New Histories of Mumbai and dedicated to distinguished Australian historian James Cosmas Jim Masselos In the course of his fifty year contribution to South Asian urban history Mumbai has remained as the principal focus of Masselos scholarship Kidambi was coconvenor and speaker at this international conference organised by Department of History the University of Mumbai in collaboration with the University of Leicester and the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London The conference was coconvened by Dr Manjiri Kamat head of the Department of History of the University of Mumbai and Rachel Dwyer Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOASEdited excerpts from the interviewQ The two historically significant teams which played in Britain in 1886 and 1911 are well known Your research points out that the Parsee Cricket Club played a great role in not just the 1886 tour but to the culture of cricket in the cityA People talk about Parsee cricket but it is the Parsee Cricket Club in specific that had a major role to play It was a prominent club functioning among other smaller ones and were defeating European players in Bombay It was set up by Ardeshir B Patel who had links with the Bombay Gymkhana and it became a dominant club because it received recognition from the English ndash something that others also wanted Playing with the Europeans was a mark that you had arrived on the scene The Parsee Cricket Club more than any other was at the heart of the cricket scene in Bombay The Club started playing at the Parsee Gymkhana first in 1866 and before that at the Esplanade maidan where all other Indian clubs practised It led to arguments between Parsee Cricket Club and European polo players the cricketers complained that once the polo players left the field was unusable for cricketDr Prashant Kidambi PicPoonam BathijaQ Can you tell us more about your research on the 1911 cricket tourA The summer of 1911 saw the first Indian cricket tour of Britain by a team that was considered panIndian However there are reports of how that same summer a 38yearold Parsi racquets player had gone to London to defend his world championship which he had won in 1904 There were also 20 Punjabi wrestlers travelling to England to put up an exhibition of their skills as did an extraordinary strongman who displayed Herculean feats The cricketers were part of this much wider set of sportsmen who find themselves in England that summer And the book is set in the context of this tour But there were attempts made even earlier as early as 1878 by none other than the Parsee Cricket ClubQ What was this attempt made by the Parsee Cricket Club to go to England in 1878A There is an extraordinary pamphlet in the British Library on the failed cricket tour and a legal case that happened in 1878 It was put together by the cricketers because they had been accused by the KN Kabraji the publisher of Rast Goftar a Gujarati fortnightly publication founded by Dadabhai Naoroji Kabraji attacked them in the Gujarati press that these cricketers were trying to make money out of this trip It resulted in a defamation case between Kabraji and Patel This is the first time that cricket ends up in the courts The cricketers refuted Kabrajis claims by showing great knowledge about cricket globally The tour finally didnt happen because of the tension in the Eastern Mediterranean region with Britain on the side of the Ottoman Empire It meant that Parsis working in the Commissariat and the military couldnt avail leave to travel to England Had it happened it would have been alongside the legendary tour of the first official Australian tour of EnglandQ Was cricket a tool used by the Parsis as a way of aligning themselves with the EnglishA Cricket was intrinsic to the English identity ndash it was a game which inculcated a specific set of characteristics ndash fair play team spirit and selflessness among them The colonial middle class in India sought to anglicise itself and crickets became a way of espousing these British values and thus so did the Parsis It was their way of saying We may not be the same skin colour but we share the same values But it wasnt just a simple case of imitating the English In the 1890s Dr Sir Ervad Jivanji Jamshedji Modi reads out a paper to the learned societies in Bombay that the ancient roots of cricket can be traced back to The Shahnama of Firdausi almost 2000 years ago that it Playing this sport was seen as a symbol of masculinity and thus this was an attempt to construct an alternate history and show that the Parsis were always a masculine raceQ In cricket tours to England and over here in the city how were the Parsi teams treated by their English counterpartsA There was a difference between how the European community here and in the UK dealt with Parsee cricketers When historians talk about the Parsi connect to the English they pain a picture of collaboration and cooperation On the sporting field Parsis winning wasnt taken so kindly by the British For the English here Parsis playing cricket was unsettling ndash it was the socalled natives taking on their game There are news reports of Europeans making fun of the Parsis The tension becomes quite heightened in the 1890s for the Parsee Cricket Club had become very good at the game while the English begin to decline mainly because new officers were yet to be trained Back in Europe however the Parsis were a curiosity but also part of the British Empire a noteworthy aspect of the British Empire was that it was marked by diversity and Parsis were a part of that So the English abroad were more accepting and saw the cricketplaying Parsis as a sign of the success of their civilizing mission So while there was racism the Parsis were given access to the aristocracy too The newspapers in England were curious about the Parsi names but also constantly going on about how difficult their names were and if they would be able to print them correctlyQ What led to the eventual closing down of the Parsee Cricket ClubA There were tensions within the club specifically those that arose because of the polo controversy While all other clubs were against the European polo players Patel backed the Bombay Gymkhana which hosted the polo players There wasnt a specific end of the club it is possible that other clubs rose to prominence as did the place of the Bombay Gymkhana