by The ground staff at the Bombay Gymkhana are re-marking the five-a-side football pitches with whitewash and the café in the Swiss chalet-style pavilion is trading roses.
The wicker chairs are taken on the verandah overlooking the field and the ceiling fans are whirring hard to keep everyone cool, while waistcoated waiters take orders and pour drinks.
It’s a scene that hasn’t changed much since 1933 when the club hosted India’s first Test match, which celebrated its 90th anniversary about six weeks ago. Then it was a club for the British. Clubhouse rules had to be relaxed to allow the Indian players to enter the pavilion.
Now it remains an exclusive haunt of the rich, in contrast to the scraggy Azad Maidan which is separated from the Gymkhana by the narrow path Mumbaikers use to get through to the city. Going up the stairs from the verandah you pass a black and white photograph taken on December 15, 1933, the first day of the Test, of two men staring down at the camera. One of them is Douglas Jardine, and the other is CK Nayadu – both captains taking bits and pieces from the century.
Jardine, with his hands behind his back, wears a white cravat with the George and Dragon crest on his lapel and done up with three buttons. Nayudu looks like a movie star with his neat mustache and pomaded hair. It’s a little less formal, pretending to be in his pocket, without a button on his blazer. Another picture shows him walking out to bat with Lala Armanath followed by an official in a pith helmet. The young Armanat would make his name, and a small fortune, with a century in the game.
A short walk away, crossing across the Cross Maidan, is the Cricket Club of India, the Brabourne Stadium, which was founded by the Maharaja of Patiala in response to being told that he could not sit in the Gymkhana pavilion. It hosted Test cricket until the early 1970s when controversy led to the BCCI building the Wankhede Stadium, the modern home of IPL and international cricket.
Less than a mile apart, but separated by almost a century of progress and change, the three institutions tell the story of the evolution of cricket in India.
The Gymkhana is a protected building, so Jardine would recognize it from his time, along with the Bombay High Court directly opposite, where his father, Malcolm, practiced law in the early 20th century.
Jardine’s trip to India was a year after Bodyline. He had to be persuaded to captain England again and his motivation was to see where he was born and the old family home. Malabar Hill, where the Jardines lived, where there are modern skyscrapers now, is the place for the rich of Mumbai. Many of the colonial buildings are long gone, the skyline has changed a lot.
Jardine gave many speeches on the tour, predicting that India would one day be a great cricketing power. That’s something Ben Stokes would recognize now.
Reading through the press reports of the game, some of the comments feel very familiar today. Jardine was a master tactician, completely committed to his team and its methods. He was not without disappointment, of course, and the tour included some tense moments when the English would bowl the bumpers, but he was praised for making changes, rotating his bowlers and being a diplomat – not a natural strength of his – giving many speeches, recognizing the importance of Anglo-Indian links, although his relationship with the governor-general Lord Willingdon improved when they rowed over a cricket pitch to be put on.
Stokes doesn’t need that kind of diplomacy. He would also be dealing with the itinerary: 50 games in five and a half months with a squad of 14 men. The tour consists of five Tests in seven weeks with a chef, analyst and massage therapist looking after the players.
While Jardine was most at ease hunting big game (including lion, tiger, panther, bear and stag) Stokes prefers to take pot shots on the golf course. The current England squad speaks with admiration and praise of Stokes’ managerial skills. In his brilliant biography of Jardine, the Spartan Cricketer, Christopher Douglas cites letters he received from some of the players on the 1933 tour. Curator Kent Hopper Levett said that Jardine “was not very cheerful and seemed to have an aggressive attitude in towards the opposition”. In contrast, John Human, the Middlesex batsman, described himself as “a great man and a credit to Winchester College” who wrote to his parents when Human went down with malaria in Bombay. The person felt that his independence was an “inferiority complex towards strangers”.
The players praised his tactics, even with a very weak team. There were four seam bowlers on the tour – Northants’ Nobby Clark and Essex’s Stan Nichols, while India had Mohammad Nissar and Amar Singh. There were more bruises than body lines although the leg theory was rarely used – when he was, during the first Test, there was an English barracks, and again in Madras when the opening of India Naoomal Jeoomal lost a kidney and was knocked out.
England won the first Test by nine wickets (and would take the series 3-0). The wire report says that most of England’s opening over consisted of a “bumper” and Jardine dropped a “sit” of a catch. “The ground became lively as members of all the castles crowded in and struggled for a view. Improvised sun shelters, consisting of sheets of canvas spread over poles, were filled, and as a backdrop were minarets of mosques, some of the finest examples of Indian architecture,” read a front page report in the Birmingham Daily Gazette.
Former England captain Arthur Gilligan, writing in the Daily News, gave his judgment from reading a wire copy, and an on-the-spot report from Jack Hobbs, who worked for the Daily Star. “The outstanding feature was the brilliant captaincy of DR Jardine who excelled in field positions and bowling changes, as I suggested he would. A study of the cables shows us that Jardine was plotting and scheming throughout life.
“Naidu’s dismissal (sic) was the result of a shrewd piece of capitulation by Jardine. The skipper moved a man over from the leg side, leaving a gap in the field, and Naudi, trying to put the ball in that direction, missed with a fatal result (and was lbw).
A similar verdict has been written about Stokes many times, including on this tour. Lala Armanath (written as Amar Nath in the UK press) became the hero with his 118, and a crowd of 50,000 was drawn to the Gymkhana on the third day to see him make his century. He was garlanded at the end of the match as India cricket’s obsession with personal milestones began. UK Daily Herald front page: “Hindu women took out diamond nose rings and ear rings and stripped themselves of bracelets and anklets to present gifts to Amar Nath. Checks, cash, jewellery, cups, coins and bats were placed on it. Several Hindu millionaires present insisted that cricket accept checks from them. Another millionaire gift was a car. He had to hire some cool people to carry all his gifts to the hotel. Today Amar Nath is the most famous man in India. A week ago he was unknown outside of local cricket circles.”
Cricket had the power to change lives then, and it does now. Ask Yahasvi Jaiswal, who began his cricket journey at the Azad Maidan, a short lofted drive from the Gymkhana.
One final word on Jardín. On his holiday in Bombay he met his old family servant and visited his late wife’s grave. A moment later he dropped dead. Jardine being rushed to the hospital in vain. It was a very different touring life back then.
