Palwankar Baloo and the First All-India Team Tour of England

 

 

 

 

Presently, the England cricket team are touring India to play 4 Test matches, 3 ODIs and 5 T20I. On this occasion, Organiser remembers the first all-India tour of England in 1911, and the contribution therein of Palwankar Baloo, arguably the greatest bowler—though largely forgotten today— India has ever produced.

“Mana ki teri deed ke qabil nahin hoon main

Tu mera shauq dekh mera intezaar dekh” —Iqbal

(Granted that I may not be worthy of your sight. Yet, look at my passion, look at my perseverance)

 

In the eye of a cricket historian, the journey of India into international cricket starts in July 1932 when India played its first Test match against England at Lord’s. However, 21 years before it, the first all-India team had toured England. The Indians fared disastrously there. Yet, stood out a single man’s performance amidst this depressing show. His name is Palwankar Baloo, arguably the first great Indian bowler. During this tour, Baloo took 114 wickets at an average of 18.84 with a best haul of 8/103 against Cambridge. Palwankar Baloo led the Hindus and later Indians to some famous victories against the formidable Europeans. He was an early idol of the Harijans as well as a hero of Babasaheb Ambedkar. He has also been compared to the legendary S F Barnes and Wilfred Rhodes, yet Palwankar remains a forgotten figure in India’s sports history today.

 

 

“Baloo’s deceptive flight and ability to vary his pace was magnificent and he could perhaps be ranked with the greatest left-arm spinners of the world.”—Col. C K Naidu, the first captain of Indian Test cricket.

Baloo and his younger brother Shivaram learnt to play cricket with the kits discarded by army officers in Pune. Baloo’s first job was at a cricket club run by Parsis at a monthly salary of 3 rupees. Later, he took job with European-only Poona Club at a monthly salary of 4 rupees. His duty here, as in the Parsi club earlier, was sweeping and rolling the pitch, erecting the nets, and occasionally bowling to member batsmen. Eventually, the club members, more particularly, the Captain of Poona team J. G. Greig, would encourage him to bowl more regularly. Baloo would hone and perfect his skills against J. G. Greig, considered as the best white batsman in India then, and many other English batsmen. Greig even paid Baloo 8 annas every time he got him out.

 

Baloo was subsequently invited to play on the side of Poona Hindus when his reputation reached far and wide. Baloo’s flick with leather ball ensured that Poona Hindus defeated the Poona Europeans and many other clubs.

 

 

The plague in Poona and attraction for big cricket at Bombay made Baloo move there. Baloo started making his name in tournaments involving all-India side. He was instrumental in the match when, for the first time, Hindu side met a foreign team, Oxford Authentics. Baloo claimed 5 wickets despite sloppy fielding, in addition to top-scoring in the Hindus’ second innings. He was also instrumental, when he took most of the wickets, in fulfilling the ambition of Ruler of Natore: to defeat the powerful all-European Calcutta Cricket Club.

 

He took wicket of redoubtable Ranjitsinhji no fewer than three times. It is worth-mentioning that Ranjitsinhji played for the English side and played only a few local matches in India. In fact, he had mild contempt for natives’ playing skills. He remarked condescendingly in his instruction booklet targeted at British audience on ‘how to play cricket’: “the game is making strides in my native land but progress is slow… In particular, bowling is a weak spot in Indian cricket.” Baloo was arguably a fitting reply to this generalization.

 

In another widely followed match, during the politically charged climate of 1905-06, between all-white Bombay Gymkhana and the BBCI Railway (8 members were Indians), Baloo’s side defeated the whites by himself taking 8 wickets. The pro-British Bombay Gazette commented that the European cricketers had found foemen worthy of their steel, possessing not only the instincts of cricketers, but of true sportsmen also. This was followed by a return match next year. Natives defeated whites once again with Baloo taking 5 wickets. Another return match witnessed the natives winning more emphatically still, by a margin of 238 runs—with Baloo’s contribution of 13 wickets and a fifty besides. The Mahratta sarcastically commented “the sportsmanly instincts of the Englishmen who have these two years allowed the Hindus to stand on the same level with their rulers and sometimes to defeat [them], if nowhere else, at least on the cricket grounds.”

 

In the most important pre-Independence tournaments, viz., Triangular and Quadrangular Cricket tournaments and Bombay Presidency matches, Baloo took 109 wickets in 16 matches, with also scoring 410 runs. The historian Ramchandra Guha lists many more such victories of Hindu side and all-India side defeating Europeans, thanks chiefly to Baloo and other Palwankar brothers, in his book A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport.

 

An all-India team toured England for the first time in 1911. The organizers tried to secure participation of Ranjitsinhji as its captain. He refused not only to participate but also fund it. Two other good players did not participate. One, a Brahmin, did not wish to cross Kala Paani for the fear of getting ostracized. The other was refused leave by his European employer. A player from Kashmir dropped out at the last moment. The captain of the team was twenty-year-old Maharaja Bhupendra Singh of Patiala, who while in England, busied himself socializing and partying in London’s High Class. He was also accompanied, in his partying spree in London, by his secretary Keki Mistry who was then probably the best batsman from the Indian side.

 

With such conditions, of course, Indian side fared poorly, winning only 6, losing 15 and drawing 2*. However, the only consolation was the performance of Baloo who took 114 wickets at an average of 18⋅84 runs per wicket, and “would easily have claimed 150 wickets had he had more support in the field”. Baloo claimed 5 wickets for 87 runs against Oxford, 4 for 96 against MCC (his wickets including two county captains and an England Test player, 7 for 83 against Lancashire, 4 for 74 against Warwickshire, 93/6 against Leicestershire, and 8 for 103 against Cambridge, etc.

Just bear in mind that in 1911, This is the performance of Baloo when he was already past his prime at the age of 36, and was suffering from swelling of the shoulder. Guha informs us that in the ninety years since Baloo returned home, only one other Indian bowler, Vinoo Mankad in 1946, has claimed more than 100 first-class wickets on a tour of England.

 

Baloo belonged to an era when cricket teams were composed on community lines. Besides there being Hindu (e.g. Gujarati Union Cricket Club, Maratha Cricket Club, Telugu Young Cricketers, Kshatriya Cricket Club), Parsi, British and Mohammedan clubs, there were inclusive cricket clubs sponsored by banks and companies. Clubs earned through the ticket price as cricket had become a very popular source of entertainment. Slow left-arm bowler Baloo played for one such club as well as for PJ Hindu Gymkhana in Bombay, and eventually represented all-India sides. Those days, the British teams were indomitable on cricket fields. Amongst natives, there were Parsis who maintained their pre-eminence on field. The induction of Baloo in Hindu club gave them an extra edge over their arch rivals Parsis as well as hitherto-indomitable Europeans. India’s earliest genuine fast bowler, M.E. Pavri, described Baloo as “one of the best native bowlers. A left-handed medium-pace bowler with an easy action. Has both breaks and a curl in the air and has a lot of spin on the ball. The most deadly bowler on a sticky wicket. May be called “Rhodes” of India. A sound bat and an active field.”

 

Guha reports his style thus: “Baloo’s control was phenomenal, and his variations subtle. ‘His pace was medium,’ recalled a Bombay journalist, ‘but he could bowl from a very slow to a really fast one and send them by round to full overarm action. He manipulated an amazing change of flight in the ball and set the batsman always guessing in each delivery, which was always different…a spinner of great skill and subtlety, a worthy forerunner of such world-class Indian slow left-arm bowlers as Vinoo Mankad and Bishan Bedi.”

 

Another cricketer who had witnessed Baloo playing remarked that he was “a fine left-hand bowler, who possesses marvellous stamina. Breaks from both sides. Has the easiest of deliveries. Seldom tires. Can bowl all day long. Keeps an excellent length. Never sends down a loose delivery. Understands the game thoroughly. Places the field to a nicety, catches come, they [fielders] have not to go in for them. Decidedly a ‘head’ bowler.”

 

Not only Baloo but his other three younger brothers too made a mark of their own. During 1911 England tour of the Indian team, Palwankar Shivram scored 930 runs at an average of over 27 per innings, and was described as “the most promising of Hindu batsmen”.

 

Ganpat, the youngest brother, became star of college cricket of North India. One college cricket historian remarked that Ganpat Palwankar played “cricket of the highest class…It was not the sum of his runs that was so much appreciated as the style in which they were obtained, for he employed a variety of strokes and his batting was perfect and true.” Ganpat, however, died early.

 

The other brother Vithal went on to become the best Indian batsman of his time, and later a captain of his side. He was carried out of the ground on the shoulders of high-caste Hindus after he led them to victory in the widely followed quadrangular tournament in 1923.

 

All the Palwankar brothers had immensely advanced the cause of social justice—not in theory, but very substantially—by their deeds and examples which sometimes even went to a boycott of the sports in case of perceived discrimination.

 

The heroics of other Palwankar brothers were aplenty, yet space here doesn’t allow me to fully cover them.

A Social (and Sports) Warrior

 

Baloo was the earliest sporting icon in India. He initially faced a lot of discrimination for belonging to low Chamar/Chambhar caste. He was served lunch off a separate plate, and on a separate table. At tea intervals, Baloo was served snacks outside, in a disposable clay pot, while his colleagues drank in quality porcelain cups inside the pavilion. If he wished to wash his hands and face, an Untouchable servant was assigned to pour water from a separate kettle in the corner of the field. However, slowly there grew reformist voices speaking against it.

Baloo’s performance had spurred a new life to the social reform movements when likes of Mahadev Govind Ranade and Tilak spoke against casteism as it was against the actualization of one’s abilities, taking Baloo’s example.

 

Ranade suggested his fellow Brahmins that if they did not have a problem playing with Baloo, what was the harm in drinking tea or breaking bread with him as well. The magazine Indian Social Reformer commented that by openly inter-dining with low-castes, the Hindu Gymkhana would destroy for good the silly barrier of pollution by touch. It termed the admission of chamar brothers in the Hindu Gymkhana as having done far more to liberalize the minds of thousands of young Hindus than all other attempts in other spheres.

 

After Baloo returned to India after his stupendous success in England tour in 1911, the welcome address, for Baloo was written and presented by Babasaheb Ambedkar, then in college, in his first-ever public appearance. Baloo was an early hero of Ambedkar and other Harijans. He had fought discriminations of his times and came out smiling.

Modern sport is replete with such incidents of racial-communal discrimination. The South African golfer Sewsunker Sewgolum was not allowed to participate in an award ceremony in his honour as the building where the ceremony was being performed, did not allow “dogs or coloured men”. Jim Thirpe, a native American, was deprived of his Olympics medals. Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in front of a hostile crowd of Nazis. Palwankar Baloo fought this battle—and actually won— before them.

 

Guha comments that “The career of Palwankar Baloo also anticipated, by half a century and more, the much-memorialized breakthrough into major league baseball of Jackie Robinson. Only in 1947 would the American public accept racially mixed teams in sport: but already, in 1896–7, the Hindus of Poona and Bombay were made to accept an Untouchable cricketer. Like Robinson after him, Baloo broke through a previously impenetrable social barrier as much by force of personality as by sporting skill alone.”

 

As Baloo the cricketer, is largely forgotten today, so is Baloo the politician too. In 1930s when Muslims had increased their demand for separate electorate, Babasaheb Ambedkar, a tall leader of Dalits, demanded the same for Harijans. The separate electorate for Harijans would have created another fissure within the Indian society by taking Harijans outside the fold of Hinduism. Baloo could foresee these British-Muslim designs. Therefore, Baloo, during the Round Table Conference, cabled the British Prime Minister his opposition to separate electorates.

 

Meanwhile, Gandhi began his ‘fast unto capacity’ against the unyielding approach of Ambedkar. Eventually, Babasaheb had to yield, and Baloo (along with another Harijan leader Rajah) was asked to negotiate on his behalf. As a result, a pact was reached whereby Untouchables were allotted more assembly seats in exchange for doing away with their demand for a separate electorate.

 

Soon, Baloo would contest for a seat in the Bombay Municipality on the ticket of the Hindu Mahasabha. During his election canvassing, Baloo said he would “ever strive for solidarity among the Hindus by advocating the necessity of Joint Electorates for the Hindus irrespective of caste and creed… I have always worked and have been working with a Nationalist point of view and I am working for the uplift of my Harijan brothers in a way which would not break them away from the great Hindu society.”

 

In mid-1930s, when Ambedkar announced his decision to covert to another religion, Palwankar Baloo termed it as suicidal. He said, “…conditions had changed considerably and there was a real feeling of goodwill on the part of the majority of caste Hindus at the lot of the Harijans”. He appealed to the Harijans to wait patiently and give a chance to the reformers.

 

Later, Baloo even fought election against Babasaheb Ambedkar on a Bombay reserved SC seat. It resulted in Baloo’s defeat with Baloo getting 11,225 votes as against Ambedkar’s 13,245. The Bombay Chronicle reasoned that Baloo’s defeat was due to a ‘spoiler’, the labour leader Joglekar who, as an independent polled 10,000 votes. If the Congress had prevailed upon Joglekar to resign, suggested the paper, then Dr Ambedkar would have been positively defeated.

 

Ambedkar’s towering achievements in uplifting lower caste people has seemingly dwarfed many other personalities from lower castes. But Baloo is one person we should never forget. He was truly a gentleman whose example did much more to social justice than most other reformers. His story is not that of ‘also-played’ but of becoming the best—even better than most world-class cricketers. Vijay Merchant said that it would be a long time before India could produce another great bowler like Baloo. He has been termed as the Indian equivalent of W. G. Grace, as the first truly great cricketer produced in India. Besides, Hindu society in particular and Indian society in general, owes a lot to Baloo in preventing another fissure within Hindu society.

N.B.: I have used the term Harijan as was preferred by Palwankars themselves, instead of Dalit which is the preferred term for the traditionally oppressed lower class in describing themselves today, or the constitutional term Scheduled Caste. The term untouchables, where used, shows the attitude of the prevalent social milieu.

*This tally includes both matches played against the recognized English counties as well as other second-class teams.