Exhibition at Lord’s tells the story of how cricket became a global sport

Don Bradman posing with his "Don Bradman" Sykes brand bat in 1932 (Source: State Library of New South Wales); and a studio portrait of Ranjitsinhji made in 1900. (Photos via Wikimedia Commons)

The World Test Championship is being held at The Oval, but cricket aficionados’ visit to London is incomplete without a peak into Lord’s. The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) which owns the Lord’s stadium has on display thousands of items ranging from Ranjitsinhji’s bat to Donald Bradman’s baggy green cap, and memorabilia associated with the 1886 all-Parsi cricket team tour to MCC to the infamous 1933 Bodyline series. At the Lord’s cricket stadium, known as the home of world cricket, its famous museum is hosting an exhibition ‘MCC and the Empire of Cricket’ which has been put together by experts and scholars including Prof Prashant Kidambi, who teaches at the University of Leicester.

“The purpose of the exhibition is to use the MCC archives to tell the story of cricket from a global and not just an Anglo perspective. The exhibition focuses on MCC’s imperial entanglements and post-colonial legacies,” says Kidambi, who is the author of Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire. At the heart of the exhibition is the attempt to show how cricket became a global sport. It is thus no surprise that I learnt of cricket being played in Egypt, Fiji, Argentina, East Africa, Brazil, Malaya, Holland, Hong Kong and Samoa.

Kidambi, in particular, found the 1868 Australian Aboriginal tour of MCC the most fascinating. At that time the team was described as “conquered natives of a convict colony” in the English press. They played 47 matches over six months, winning and losing 14 each, while drawing 19 matches. “The Aboriginal tour of England represented the earliest emergence of non-white cricket. There are several objects relating to them including a leangle which was used at the conclusion of a match for entertainment.” The leangle, which looks more like a hockey stick than a cricket bat was used to entertain the assembled crowd after the match by accepting bets to dodge the swarms of balls thrown at them.

One key highlight in the exhibition is the bat used by Don Bradman, arguably the best batsman in the world, which was sponsored by Sykes.  Much before the commercialization of cricket, Bradman’s bat had his name along with the sponsor’s. That perhaps makes him the earliest cricketer to have his bat sponsored. Bradman was also the prime target during the 1932-33 Ashes series in Australia now remembered as the Bodyline series. English bowlers targeted Australian batsmen with devastatingly fast, short-pitched deliveries which injured several of them.

“We have the cricket ball that aimed to knock away the cap,” said Neil Robinson, Head, Heritage & Collections at Lord’s, pointing to the ball used by English bowlers in the Bodyline series and Bradman’s green baggy cap. The series sparked a diplomatic row between the countries, and although Bradman’s average was reduced, it remained a respectable 56. Interestingly, the main bowler for England, Harold Larwood, who followed his captain Douglas Jardine’s instructions, was shunned by England and never represented the national team again. He emigrated to Australia with his wife and five daughters in 1950.

Amidst a swarm of visitors arriving inside the museum, Robinson and Kidambi help make sense of the changing equation in world cricket. Robinson recalled the controversial England tour of Pakistan in 1956. Led by Donald Carr, when the English team was peeved with the decisions by umpire Idris Baig, seven players, including Carr, poured buckets of cold water over Baig. “It did not go down well when the story came out. This was a nation which was only nine years old and it was expressing its national identity on the world stage through its sporting prowess. To insult one of its senior cricketing figures was an insult to its nation. The MCC team, its captain, team manager totally failed to appreciate that. It caused a major outrage. The team and the MCC were forced to write letters of apology. It was very embarrassing and again an indication of where that power relationship between MCC and overseas cricketing nations was beginning to strain,” said Robinson.

But much before the British left the subcontinent, cricket was deployed by individuals and communities to further their own agendas. The exhibition has details and sketches of the Parsi team that toured England way back in 1886. “Sport has this double-sided quality, it affirms the existing power structure, but also offers a tool to people to re-imagine their identity because it lays down that everyone is equal on the field,” says Kidambi as he goes past the sketches of the touring Parsi cricketers published by Penny Illustrated Press in June 1886. “The Parsis in Bombay took to cricket to express their Britishness, Ranjitsinhji wanted to get his throne back, other aristocrats and corporates like Tata who provided funding wanted to cultivate close ties with the English. But cricket also offered space to people like Palwankar Baloo [the first prominent Dalit cricketer in the early twentieth century] who questioned caste hierarchy.”

In 1989, the practice of MCC’s president automatically becoming the chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC), cricket’s apex global body, was changed, although it continued to be headquartered in Lord’s. Then in 2005, the ICC headquarters itself was moved to Dubai thus cutting away MCC’s intimate link with the ICC. But Kidambi believes a major shift happened in 1996 when India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka jointly hosted the World Cup. “The coming together of three Asian countries to host the World Cup where they outmanoeuvred existing powers like Australia and England was a momentous occasion. It marked a change in cricket’s power structure,” says Kidambi.

The exhibition may showcase how MCC lost its imperial hubris, but at the same time reflects its effort to promote goodwill and mutual understanding.  MCC has been trying to shake its past, and in 2022, its president, the actor, writer and broadcaster Stephen Fry, spoke of the need to do away with the “turgid image of snobbery and elitism”. It was proposed to do away with the annual traditional Oxford v Cambridge and Eton v Harrow cricket matches and instead allow a competition drawing in other schools. But a furious outcry from its members forced the MCC to announce the elite matches would continue for the next five years after which a review is expected to take place with the possibility of a further vote on the issue from the members.

With the ongoing India-Australia World Test Championship and the onset of Indian summer in London, there has been an extended rush of South Asians to England. The exhibition at Lord’s offers one more reason to visit the home of world cricket. They have also included a flag of Mumbai Indians.