In 1935-36, the first team of Australian cricketers set foot in India on the invitation of the then Maharaja of Patiala, Bhupinder Singh. Nearly 90 years later, their stories see the light of print.
The 15 Australian cricketers who embarked on this groundbreaking journey included Jack Ryder as the captain, Charlie Macartney his deputy and other cricket greats such as Bill Ponsford, under whom one of the stands at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is named after today.
The cricketers were invited to help prepare the selection of the Indian cricket Test team that was going to Britain in the middle of 1936. India was already playing Test at the time, they had played one Test series in India, another one in England and this was going to be the third Test encounter.
It was not until 2004 that the stories of these men were uncovered. Sports historian Megan Ponsford, the granddaughter of Bill Ponsford, was involved in setting up the content for the National Sports Museum at the MCG when she found an archive box of material that her great uncle Tom Leather had lent to the club.
Interestingly, Megan didn’t know that her great uncle played cricket and was part of the contingent. At this stage, his wife and two children had died and when asked what she wanted to do with the box, it would herald the start of her own journey to unravel a poignant moment in Australian-Indian cricketing ties and friendship.
Inside the box were layers of history, culture and memory. Some 100 photographs, menus, scorecards, signed balls, letters from back home, et al.
As a photographer and well versed in analog film photography, the photographs held an instant appeal for Megan.
“But there were also incredible menus too. This was an incredibly luxurious tour for which the Maharaja spent a great deal of money including a significant pay packet for the players,” says Megan.
Megan knew she had unearthed something that had the risk of disappearing.
The 1935-36 touring Australian team was not recognised by the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket then as simultaneously the official Test team was playing a series in South Africa.
Nonetheless, it was a second-strong team. “Some of the cricketers were lured out of retirement and encouraged to participate in the tour despite opposition from cricket officialdom. Others were young up-and-comers with potential, including my great-uncle Tom Leather (brother in-law of Bill Ponsford), who thought the tour may propel his career and that the adventure would be fun”.
“At this stage, it had been really overlooked as a tour because it wasn’t a Test tour. And because it didn’t have Test status, it really wasn’t treated seriously. I just can’t believe there has been no research into this first time the Australian XI went to India,” says Megan.
So she took up a PhD on the tour, which was completed in 2016, and published The 1935 Australian Cricket Tour of India, Breaking Down Social and Racial Barriers (Routledge) earlier this year. But Meagan felt she was keeping the story within a niche narrow market if she was only publishing as an academic in print.
When friend Arun Sengupta suggested she write an easy version of the book, which he ended up editing, Megan has come out with The Has-Beens and Never-Will-Bes: A Boy’s Own Adventure of Australian Cricket and the Raj (Cricket Mash), which was launched on 11 November.
Although her whole argument is why this tour has been overlooked, Megan in her new book tells the story of the tour, which lasted 5-6 months of Australian summer, through this archival material “because this is stuff that has never been seen before”.
“From the palaces of the Raj to the foothills of the Himalayas, the evolving social consciousness of the ragtag team of Australia cricketers defines the tour. The deeply conservative cricket establishment was challenged as the tour broke cultural, racial and sporting codes that were intrinsic to the then-amateur game”.
“The itinerary of these cricketers was also absolutely crazy. Aeroplane travel then was very much in its infancy, so they travelled on the different trains across India. There were many complaints by the players about the whole train system,” she adds with a laugh.
Importantly, in the light of the political background with problems bubbling away between the English and Indians at the time and also in light of it being a couple of years after bodyline (1932-22), there were all these indicators of Indian nationalism growing at the time, she notes.
“The Australians weren’t happy with the British and the Indians weren’t that happy with the British either. The whole empire was, I guess, crumbling and life was definitely changing. The Australian team wouldn’t go to any functions or clubs where Indians weren’t allowed. They were quite progressive in the way they thought at that time,” adds Megan.
The whole thrust and argument of her book is, there was incredibly good will on the tour largely driven by tour manager called Frank Tarrant. A good cricketer himself, he went to England to play and met Ranjitsinhji, the first Indian cricketer who played international cricket (the Ranji Trophy is named after him). The two would become good friends.
When cricket stopped in England because of World War I, Ranji invited Tarrant to India and was paid to be a cricket coach for several members of the Indian royal families. He would spend 20 years in India. When the Maharaja of Patiala put up money for the tour, Tarrant became the main organiser. “I really think the good will on that tour was incredible. What they wanted to achieve was for India to choose a good team to go to England to play the following year.”
Megan has had the fortune of knowing both her great uncle Tom Leather and grandfather Bill Ponsford. She was in her 20s when both passed away. Of her grandfather, she says, “He broke world records and was going to be the batting sensation of that era when Donald Bradman, who was a little bit younger than him, came and broke all his records. But still my grandfather was a famous Victorian player playing for the Melbourne Cricket Club as well.
“I spent my whole childhood and teenage years living with him and getting the idea that he was just a normal grandfather. My early memories of him are being asked lots of cricket questions by the media and others. So, my first introduction to cricket was through him.”
Megan says she has been living this tour for far too long and is relieved the book is finally out. “It took a whole lot of time because it was difficult to sell a niche story,” she says, adding the research also involved several visits to India and Pakistan over the past 20 years.
Of the book’s title The Has-Beens and Never-Will-Bes, Megan explains it is what the Australian press called the team then. “Has Beens because they were older players and Never Will Be because the younger ones who were invited hadn’t got Test selection for South Africa and there was a big question mark about whether they were actually ever going to make it.”
And she has a huge experience about that as well. “None of those younger players ever ended up playing Test cricket and there are a number of reasons why that happened. First, there was WWII and cricket wasn’t played at that time, it stopped a lot of the ambition of the younger players.”
The book comes at an important teething time of the T20 World Cup. Megan believes the introduction of the subcontinent to cricket and the increasing role that the subcontinent has played in cricket has been a good thing.
“I really hope people enjoy the celebration of the closeness of India and Australia that could have started way back then.”
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