Anybody who has read Ramchandra Guha's excellent study, A Corner of a Foreign Field, will be aware of more details about Palwankar Baloo and his contribution to Indian Cricket, than available elsewhere. Guha made the effort to trace the family and went up to speak to Palwankar Baloo's nephew and P. Vithal's son, in person, at Dadar. Vithal's son gifted Guha with his own copy of his father's autobiography. I am inclined therefore, to attach weight to Ramchandra Guha, the polymath historian's account of his research into Palwankar Baloo's life, times, the tribulations he faced and how he overcame and contribution to Indian Cricket as opposed to cricket in India.
He is the first true superstar of Indian cricket, who learnt the game here and played it here in the colours of his own nation and club.
I have read many authors who have written about the more well known Ranji. From Guha himself, through Satadru Sen, Boria Majumdar to the likes of Simon Wilde, besides the plenty of inevitable articles one is drenched with upon the subject. By all accounts, Ranji was more an Englishman's cricketer, a royal prince who played for the great Home with some loyalty, than a homegrown player who struggled up the ladder with inherent disadvantages of being a native playing the game in a colony of the empire, and a 'lowly' one at that in the existing society of his time. Guha mentions two occasions when Ranji declined to participate or contribute to the overseas tour of an Indian team to England.
Guha does mention that Ranji did play the odd game in India, and we, by correlating with other authors are forced to conclude (albeit with lingering uncertainity) that Ranji was active in India during his association with the Maharajah of Patiala, which also had extra-cricketing reasons so important to Ranji himself at that time. Satadru Sen explores the peculiar circumstances and challenges Ranji had to face and how best he existed and even thrived, in that narrow zone which touched the fringes of a Loyalist on one side and the boundaries of a Nationalist on the other side.
The man was of Indian stock alright but played the English game as an Englishman.
The contributions of Baloo are best detailed in and read from Guha's book I mentioned before. To extract them in isolation and present here would be to destroy the narrative context and its relevance. I can only urge you, the true lover of Indian cricket who wants to know more about its origins, its society and development, to enrich yourself with a copy of Guha's book and read for yourself there instead.
If you can also add Boria's Once Upon a Furore : Lost Pages of Indian Cricket and Satadru Sen's Migrant Races, it is impossible not to understand better the relative contributions of various players to the game in India.
The Palwankars were also perhaps the first family of indigenous cricketers who rose from the masses and could play with competence. Royals may have seen families of their menfolk play the game; perhaps the Parsis and Mohammedans of the Quadrangular era and before might have seen family members play alongside or in succession, but surely, there isn't one in the history of Indian cricket to have played with so much accomplishment as the Palwankars.
Baloo, the oldest of the Pawlankars, may have some competition in the great Parsi cricketer, Dr. M.E. Pavri, for the title of the 'first great Indian cricketer' along with others. In fact, the man lablelled as the 'Indian WG', Dr. M.E.Pavri, himself labelled Baloo Palwankar as the 'Indian Wilfred Rhodes'.
Guha himself says
Now, K.S.Ranjitsinhji was unquestionably the first great cricketer of Indian origin. But he always maintained that he was in esence an 'English cricketer',for it was in that country that he learned and played most of his cricket. England vs Australia, not Jodhpur vs Natore: that was the contest he chose to remember.
If one rules out Ranji, claimants to to the title of the first great Indian cricketer include the early Parsis, men like M.E.Pavri, for example, or B.D.Gagrat, another fine all rounder, or the bowler R.E.Mody - known, after a famous Surrey cricketer, as 'the Richardson of the East' - or the big hitter B.C. Machliwalla, 'the Parsee Jessop'.
Guha goes on to conclude the chapter by enlightening us about the sources of such description
This description is taken from Manekji Kavasji Patel's history of Parsi cricket. [Guha also describes before and in later chapters the intense rivalries which often colored early Indian cricket organized along communal lines] But Patel then adds that 'these and other feats of strength and skill attributed to him [Hiraji Kostao] make a large demand upon our credulity'. More reliable records exist of the skill and subtlety of the Hindu bowler of a later generation who might justly be called the 'first great Indian cricketer'. The case for Baloo is further developed in the chapters that follow.
After the Hindus (who followed behind the Parsis in taking to the game) managed to record their first victory over a team of English amateurs in the Calcutta Cricket Club (all-European) vs Cooch-Behar and Natore,
'the Hindus, growing in confidence, had first challenged the Parsis for a representative game,' says Guha. Whereas the Parsis refused to play the Hindus in the prevailing climes of internicine competition, rivalry and often differences in perception of loyalty during those times, the Europeans were said to have sportingly agreed to step in. So, Guha tells us.
For their eleven the Hindus chose six players from Bombay, including Baloo and Shivram, and five from outside [outside the Bombay Presidency], one being the incomparable Seshachari. [the brilliant Brahmin wicketkeeper in arms to Baloo's left armed wizardry from the Madras Presidency] They had hoped that K.S.Ranjitsinhji would play for and captain them, but he refused. In fact, as the match was being planned Ranji was finishing a little booklet for a British audience on 'how to play cricket'. This contained some patronizing comments on his countrymen...
...
He then made gracious mention of two or three Indian cricketers, all Parsi.
Ranji was sceptical of Hindu cricket, but the Parsis were positively hostile.[RC Guha - Up from Serfdom]
Ranji's commitment to Indian cricket may be questioned and explained, as has been done by different historians and authors. If historical versions are to be believed, then the
Jam Saheb was perhaps in some crisis financially and was therefore also playing for the Maharaja of Patiala besides. Then there was also the tricky matter of succession to the feudal throne and holding on to it.
[Satadru Sen and Boria Majumdar]Baloo and Shivram's success and importance to the team was looked at in reformist light as well. In the dark orthodoxy of those time, there were active reformists who were changing the way society looked at itself and its constituent members. Gopalkrishna Gokhale was one such and the
Indian Social Reformer edited by K Natarajan, belonged to the Gokhale school of thought which suggested that social reform must precede independence, in contrast to Bal Gangadhar Tilak's freedom first approach well echoed in his famous words - 'Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it !' - there was no plea, no conjoination, no supplication to determine one's own fate in that.
Guha tells us of the positive attention Baloo and Shivram's presence and success generated in that period of time.
The Tribune interpreted the cricketing victory as a sign that subdued Asia was shaking off its shackles. Other papers welcomed it as a victory over caste prejudice. As the Indian Spectator had noted, during the three days of the match the players of both sides dined together, the European with the Hindu and the Brahmin with the Chamaar. The way to this unprecedented intermingling had been previously cleared by the decision of the PJ Hindu Gymkhana to allow Baloo and Shivram entry not only into its cricket field but into its cafe as well. Now the course, the course of the match and the contribution to the Hindu victory of the Baloo brothers provoked a long leading article in that respected voice of Hindu liberalism, the Indian Social Reformer. By 'openly interdining' with low-castes, it said, the Hindu Gymkhana would 'destroy for good' the 'silly barrier of pollution by touch'. The 'history of the admission of these chamar brothers in the Hindu Gymkhana', continued the Indian Social Reformer, 'is credit to all and has done far more to liberalize minds of thousands of young Hindus than all other attempts in other sphere'. Indeed, the triumph of cricket over caste was
"a landmark in the nation's emancipation from the old disuniting and denationalizing customs. This is a conscious voluntary change, a manly moral regulated liberty, not, as in [the] railways [where members of different castes had willy-nilly to sit with each other], a compulsory change...Hindu sportsmen of Poona and Bombay have shown that, where national interest required, equal opportunity must be given to all of any caste, even though the offer of such an opportunity involved trampling of old prejudices...Let the lessons learnt in sport be repeated in political, social and educational walks of life. Let all disuniting and denationalizing customs in all high, low or lowest Hindus disappear and let India cease to be the laughing-stock of the whole world".
Not only did Baloo possess great skill as a bowler...there is a report which describes his bowling thus -
'he could bowl six balls with different menace, but looked as innocent as the morning dew' - he also had accomplishments to match. He was the first Indian bowler to register over 100 first class wickets on a tour of England, a feat matched only in 1946 by the great Vinoo Mankad.
Baloo could also score usefully when needed, and through his cricket, he was a beacon of hope for the downtrodden and an inspiration for reformers of society.
It is here that I must go back to Guha who narrates thus
Palwankar Baloo, to give the man his name, has been ignored by cricket writers, whose own narratives usually begin with the first official Test played by India, against England at Lord's in July 1932. Stranger still, he is unknown to the burgeoning field of Dalit (Untouchable) scholarship as well. Older works suggest that Baloo was the first Dalit public figure in western India, and an early hero of Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, the great lawyer-scholar and leader of the Untouchables. But more recent works, written in the wake of Ambedkar's posthumous emergence as a leader more widely worshipped in contemporary India than Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, do not care to mention him [Baloo] at all.
Yet he was once very well known.
Along with his brothers Sadashiv, Vithal and Ganpat, Baloo formed a formidable first cricketing family of Indian cricket, which rose from the unprivileged soil and also possessed distinct skills of high quality required for playing the game.
Palwankar Baloo may have credible claims to have been captain long long before the thought stirred in the minds of others, and his legacy certainly has credible claims to be called the first great Indian cricketer purely on merit.
Is it not time then that we give him the captaincy by naming the main domestic tournament after him? Think about it...
A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport By Ramachandra GuhaPalwankar Baloo - WikipediaPalwankar Baloo - CricinfoSatadru Sen's Book:-
Boria Majumdar's :-
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