Part 1 of 2
IN June 1896, the British cricketing public were grumbling about the omission of a gifted Sussex batsman from the first Test against Australia. The issue was eligibility, as he was an Indian national, K.S. Ranjitsinhji.* But George Trott, Australia’s big-hearted captain, rubber-stamped Ranjitsinhji’s appearance in the second Test, where ‘Ranji’ repaid him by battering his bowlers around Old Trafford, scoring 154 not out in the second innings.
Ranji had discovered cricket at Trinity College, Cambridge, after arriving in England in 1888 with his old Headmaster from Rajkumar College. Both Ranji and the British government had been disappointed when the boy’s cousin, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar,** adopted another family member as his heir, but Ranji took to life in England, and the English took to Ranji.
His Indian heritage, his seemingly impossible shot-making, and rumours that he was a dispossessed prince, drew them in adoring crowds: Neville Cardus wrote that when Ranji took guard, ‘a strange light from the East flickered in the English sunshine’.
India did not have a recognised national team of its own until 1932. Apart from his celebrity status, Ranji played little part in the growth of competitive Indian cricket, which emerged out of the Presidency Match in Bombay between the Bombay Gymkhana, a British-dominated gentlemen’s sports club, and members of the Young Zoroastrian Club, formed by the Parsee community in 1850. Matches were granted first-class status in 1892.
Nawanagar in modern-day Gujarat, northwest India, was founded in 1540. It came under British rule in 1812, finding peace after centuries of constantly fighting off neighbouring states and the Mughal Empire.
Précis
Ranjitsinhji was an Indian of royal blood who took up cricket at Cambridge after coming to England in 1888, and went on to play for Sussex and, after questions of eligibility had been settled, to represent England, making his Test debut with an unbeaten century against the Australians at Old Trafford in 1896. (51 / 60 words)
Part Two
RANJI joined Sussex in 1895, and quickly became a popular favourite for his dashing strokeplay and trademark leg glance. He toured Australia with England in the winter of 1897-98, and finished the 1900 season with a first-class average of over eighty-seven.
He was, moreover, not a dispossessed prince much longer: in 1907, Ranjitsinhji succeeded at last to the throne of Nawanagar.* His administrator, Colonel Berthon, now began working with Edwin Lutyens to transform what Ranji once called Jamnagar’s ‘evil slum’ into ‘the Jewel of Kathiawar’, lowering taxes at the port, modernising agriculture and building railways to stimulate trade, and banish poverty.
Ranjitsinhji had a vision of India as a commonwealth of self-governing princely states under the British Crown, and helped found the Chamber of Princes to advance it. But neither the nationalist Indian National Congress nor Westminster shared his vision, and when Ranjitsinhji died in 1933 and his ashes were scattered on the Ganges, a little more of the Raj slipped away with them.
For more information on Nawanagar, see Indian Rajputs: Nawanagar and Jamnagar Tourism Guide: Popular Tourist Attractions & Places to See.
Précis
Following a successful international career with England and club career with Sussex, Ranji returned to India in 1907 to take up his responsibilities as ruler of Nawanagar. Although his policies brought great improvements to the capital Jamnagar, his blueprint for India as a British commonwealth of autonomous states was swept aside by independence in 1947. (53 / 60 words)