AUSTRALIA TOURS INDIA : Reminiscing the first 1935-36 tour

AUSTRALIA TOURS INDIA : Reminiscing the first 1935-36 tour.

(Images courtesy : Bradman Foundation)

The touring Australian team, under the captaincy of Aaron Finch, began their 2020 three match ODI series against the hosts, with an emphatic win in the opening ODI, which was played in Mumbai. Indians were given a crushing ten wicket defeat. The Australians chased down a modest Indian score in no time with both the openers David Warner and Aaron Finch scoring magnificent centuries to win the game for Australia. It was a horrendous start for team India.  As always India, Australia cricket matches have always been of great interest for the cricket crazy fans in India and this brief sojourn will be no different. The hype created by the Indian media building upto the opening ODI game in Mumbai indicated that matches are going to be a close contest between the two strong teams with Kohli’s men having an edge. But that was not to be and the visitors proved to be far superior in the opening game in Mumbai. Let us hope that India will bounce back in the next game in Rajkot tomorrow and the decider in Bangalore will be blockbuster match. 

This years three ODI series tour of Australia to India, reminds me of the inaugural cricket tour that Australia undertook to India in 1935-36. This tour has largely been ignored due to its unofficial status and lack of stars that constituted the Australian team. During the course of developing an exhibition “Cricket Connects : India Australia”, which I had the honour to curate and exhibit at the Sydney Cricket Grounds in the October, 2016, I had covered this Australian inaugural tour to India in greater detail with some of None the less the inaugural Australian tour to India was a historic tour. The success of this tour is indebted to the financial patronage £10,000, given by the Maharajah Bhupinder Singh, who lavishly financed the inaugural Australian tour to India.

The Maharaja Bhupinder Singh was motivated by his passion and love for cricket, his political and economic aspirations, and the recognition of the game of Cricket as a symbol of allegiance to the British. He envisaged  that his support for the tour will leave a legacy as the guardian of the game and in the process he will get that much more closer to the colonial rulers. The Maharajah was supported by his able lieutenant, Frank Tarrant. The relationship between Tarrant and the Maharajah was mutually beneficial to each other and contravened the imperial constraints of interracial collaborations. Tarrant promised the Australian players an unforgettable adventure: tigers to shoot, gala events to attend and lavish parties amongst the decadence of the Indian nobility. 

Australian-born cricketer, all-rounder Frank Tarrant (1880–1951) had played a major role in the development of the formative years of Indian colonial cricket, particularly because of an unique collaboration that he had with the Maharaja Bhupinder Singh (1891–1938), the sovereign ruler of the wealthy princely state of Patiala in the state of undivided Punjab. Frank Tarrant had moved to the sub continent and became associated with Indian cricket, eventuated through his friendship with the Indian born British cricketer, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji (Ranji). Tarrant flourished in this new environment. He was paid handsomely for his services and moved permanently to India in 1914, severing his ties with the Middlesex County Cricket Club.

There was lot of resistance and apprehension to the inaugural Australian tour to India. The Australian board was anxious that the tour could jeopardise the coinciding Test tour to South Africa and the domestic Shefeld Shield competition. The Board therefore insisted that the touring party was not an ofcial Australian XI and the matches played in India could not be called as Test matches. This decision of the board may also have been more to do with the highly lucrative financial reward that went into this tour, with each team member receiving £300 and £3 spending money per week. For these Australian cricketers, in the post-Depression era, this was a signicant amount of money and no doubt a highly attractive offer to participate in the tour.

On October 9, 1935 the Australian cricket team of excited cricketers departed from Port Melbourne on the inaugural tour of India with Frank Tarrant employed as the team manager. Aboard the SS Mongolia, the team captained by veteran Jack Ryder, were captivated by tour manager Frank Tarrant’s glamorous tales of life in colonial India and sanguine stories of the Indian cricket in its infancy. The team was looking forward to seeing the country, which was famously portrayed in the fable stories of Rudyard Kipling’, the poet of the Empire, who lived in India. With the unprecedented restrictions and conditions that were laid on the team by the Australian Cricket Board, it was no wonder that the team that was chosen to tour Indian comprised a mixed bag of players: some veteran greats, well past their prime, and some promising debutants. The age of the players ranged from the grand daddy of the tour, Bert Ironmonger aged 53, to young Ron Morrisbey, who was to celebrate his 21st birthday during the tour to India. The team was described in the Sporting Globe as 'veterans and colts as happy as schoolboys'.

Billed as the Maharajah's team, the Australians played four unofficial test matches in Bombay, Calcutta, Lahore and Chennai besides playing other matches over four months during this historic tour to India. The Maharajah himself, sometimes, played in the Australian team with his cricket attire, which was complemented by the flamboyant earrings that glittered in the sun. The schedule was gruelling. The team had to play 23 games that involved exhaustive commuting by train across the country, sometimes the same ground frequently being covered multiple times. This grueling tour was marred by illness and injury to the team. Arthur Allsopp, Lisle Nagel and Bert Ironmonger acquired enteric fever. Allsopp was lucky to survive and spent three months in Bombay's St George Hospital, where only European patients were admitted. Luckily for Allsopp, the Maharajah picked up the bill for his internment. Charles Macartney and Ron Oxenham incurred debilitating leg injuries. Wendell Bill's jaw was broken by the pacy Mohammad Nissar. Leather returned home having acquired pyorrhoea, inammation of the teeth sockets, resulting in the loss of his teeth. At times the team was so depleted that the call went out for available players and Australian tourists Joe Davis, Frank Warne, Frank Tarrant and his son Bert made up the numbers.

Despite the gruelling schedule, the Australians embraced their role as cricket educators and goodwill ambassadors enthusiastically. The camaraderie of the tour was evident with players of both teams mixing not just on the field but also in the playgrounds and palaces. On the teams return to Perth on the Strathnaver, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Tour a Great Success claimed:

“The Captain Jack Ryder said that the tour had been a great success in every way. The Australians had left a wonderful impression behind them of skill, sportsmanship and good companionship. Cricket in India was booming. It was played everywhere. The smallest crowd at the team's matches was 5000 and at the big centres there were daily attendances of more than 20,000”. 

This section of the exhibition was covered with some of the rarest archival photographs and other materials some of which were shared for the exhibition by the Bradman Foundation to us. 

May the best team win the current three day ODI series between India and Australia