Hollywood, cricket, and the US of A

In 2002, 'Lagaan', an Indian movie with a cricket match as its central theme, became the third Indian movie to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film but it did not win the Oscars.

If you are a Hollywood buff, you probably know that Elton John and Tim Rice won the Academy Awards for “Can you feel the love tonight?” in 1995. John, an ardent cricket fan, had babysat Ian Botham’s children, but it was Rice’s acceptance speech that flummoxed everyone.

“Many thanks to everyone at Disney, in particular, as it’s a musical thing, Mr Hans Zimmer,” said Rice, before adding, “I’d also like to thank Denis Compton, a childhood hero of mine.”

Rice co-wrote the musical, Cricket (1986), with Andrew Lloyd Webber, which begins with a cricket match. The protagonist, Donald Hobbs, is obviously named after the legends, Donald Bradman and Jack Hobbs. Rice himself played a cricketer.

He owns the amateur Heartaches Cricket Club, and has also been the president of the MCC. He had grown up in awe of Compton, the debonair English cricketer who now has a stand named after him at Lord’s.

But all that had been was on the other side of the Atlantic. America, once a great cricketing nation, had little to do with Denis Compton in 1995.

After a frantic search of their employee database, Walt Disney Studios announced: “We don’t know who Denis Compton is. He doesn’t appear to be at Disney Studios or have anything to do with them.”

It was not always like this. There is evidence of cricket being played in the USA in 1709, and the sport was very popular in the 18th century. There was also a variant called "wicket", which George Washington, no less, played at least once.

The Americans lost interest in most things British after their Independence in 1776. Yet, cricket remained curiously popular. In 1844, the USA hosted Canada for the first ever international match, where Manhattan is today. The two nations still play for the K.A. Auty Cup — the oldest active international rivalry in any sport.

However, during the Civil War, the American soldiers figured out that the baseball matches were shorter. And unlike cricket, which required a carefully constructed pitch, baseball could be played anywhere. The Civil War camps played a key role in the rise of baseball — and the decline of cricket in the USA.

Cricket became concentrated in the area in and around Philadelphia. Bart King, the greatest American cricketer of all time and one of the pioneers of the "swerve" (swing), played on either side of 1900. It finally faded out after the World War I.

Nearly two decades later, the sport resurfaced at the other end of the country, largely due to the enthusiasm of former England Test captain C. Aubrey Smith. Also an actor, Smith went to the USA, and has a star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1932, Smith founded the Hollywood Cricket Club. Still in existence, the club actively tries to spread the sport, especially in California. At various points in its long history, the members included luminaries like Boris Karloff, PG Wodehouse, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, and Laurence Olivier.

Cricket kept making fleeting appearances in the USA, even in cinema. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) featured two characters, Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne), desperately trying to find the score of an Ashes Test in Old Trafford.

As things transpired, the match in question was a real match, from the 1938 Ashes. Charters and Caldicott became iconic characters. Two years later, they reprised their roles in Night Train to Munich (1940).

Cricket continued to make fleeting appearances, both in Hollywood and in the USA. Three years after Rice’s speech and Disney’s subsequent confession, the ICC launched the Champions Trophy. They had considered the Walt Disney World in Florida as a probable venue the proximity to the West Indies — before finalising on Dhaka.

In 2002, in the innings break of an ODI between New Zealand and England in Wellington, Peter Jackson entered the venue and placed curious-looking instruments on the ground. He then asked the crowd to roar, growl, and make every sort of ghastly noise.

They obliged, and Jackson recorded it all. This later became the soundtrack of a battlefield scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002).

There’s a video of itpic.twitter.com/zcSsupwGn5

— mo (@_paper0towns) February 15, 2022

In the same year, Lagaan, an Indian movie with a cricket match as its central theme, became the third Indian movie to be nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film.

Lagaan did not win the Oscars, but Slumdog Millionaire did in 2009. In the movie, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) has to name the man with the most First-class hundreds (correct answer: Jack Hobbs). We also get to see a cricket match at Javed’s (Mahesh Manjrekar) house, where Sachin Tendulkar is run out for 99.

Between the two movies, the USA qualified for the Champions Trophy in 2004, and for the Under-19 World Cup in 2006.

Cricket came to the USA big time in 2015, with the Cricket All-Stars. The three Twenty20 matches featured some of the biggest names in the world. The captains, Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne, picked the players and unveiled the jerseys at Times Square.

The year before that, Dale Steyn played himself in Blended — and he was not the first South African cricketer to act in a movie, either. Six years before Steyn, Hansie: A True Story (2008), a movie based on Hansie Cronje, required a cricketer to play Allan Donald. They got Dane Vilas, who would later play for South Africa.

Russell Crowe’s case was different. A cousin of former New Zealand captains Martin and Jeff, Crowe debuted as a director in 2014, with The Water Diviner. He needed a bat for the movie, and the perfectionist that he was, he wanted a replica of one used by former Australian captain Monty Noble in 1905. He would not settle for anything but.

While the expatriates from the Indian subcontinent holds the key, the proximity to the West Indies plays a role in the development of cricket in the USA. The West Indies sometimes "host" matches in Florida. Along with the West Indies, the USA will co-host the 2024 T20 World Cup.

As the USA entered the fray, so did Hollywood. When the Caribbean Premier League was launched, Gerald Butler bought an equity stake of Jamaica Tallawahs, while Mark Wahlberg did the same for Barbados Tridents.

It was not just the actors: several American cricketers have played in the Caribbean Premier League as well. Recently, the Delhi Capitals picked Philadelphia-born Tara Norris — the only cricketer from an Associate Nation — at the auction for the inaugural Women’s Premier League.

The first season of Major League Cricket — an American cricket league on the lines of the IPL — will begin in July 2023.

If it takes off, Hollywood will, perhaps, make a movie solely based on the sport Robin Williams had once described as “baseball on Valium”.