Cricket in the 19th century – Malabar
Kerala finally got into the Ranji trophy finals and played
two-time winner Vidharba. Sadly, they conceded a first-innings lead and in the
resulting draw and loss of the title, were outclassed by another Malayali player
Karun Nair, playing for Vidharba, who scored close to 200 runs across his two
innings. But well, I will call it a Malayali triumph nevertheless and proved
that Kerala who were always a subject of ridicule when it came to top-class
cricket, are inching their way up.
What is remarkable, is that it took over 150 years from the
time it originated, for a team from Kerala to find itself in the Ranji final.
Even more interesting is the fact that it took them 68 years after they first
started playing in the Ranji fixtures, to get to the finals. I am sure experts
will provide umpteen reasons, but this article is not about the present match
at all and is about the beginnings of the game in Malabar.
My initiation to cricket was by my father, who in his
college days played for Presidency College Madras. He introduced to us the
rudiments of holding the bat and bowling with a straight arm, on a makeshift pitch
in front of our rented home in Koduvayur, Palghat. The portly Rama Mannadiar,
our landlord must have, sitting amid oil, spices, and rice in his
‘palacharakku’ shop nearby, wondered what this family was up to, for cricket
was an alien game to those small towners.
Tellicherry is located in North Malabar, about 15 miles
south of Cannanore. As a home to the British gentry, it hosted luminaries like
Arthur Wellesley who was later titled the Duke of Wellington and Napolean’s nemesis, TH Baber, Overbury,
Brennen, Gundert, William Logan, etc. While it is reasonable to assume that
many of the ICS officers and career soldiers, educated in British schools had
played cricket before sailing to distant Malabar, and considered it a sport
dear to them, it is not well documented. Nevertheless, we will travel back in
time and revisit some of the tales, legends, lore, and a few scattered facts,
after we have had a look at the earliest mention of cricket being played on the
Indian shores.
This stray mention is the only documentary evidence of the
game being played in India for the first time. The Calcutta cricket club was
established in 1792 (6 years after MCC at Lords) and in 1871, Narendranath
Ganguly wrote about the 1721 game, while talking about the CCC. If there were
others, we do not know of them yet. The Madras Cricket Club was founded in
1846. The Oriental Cricket Club was founded in 1848 by the Parsis of Bombay,
and the Bombay Gymkhana was established in 1875. The first recorded cricket
match in India was played in 1751 between British settlers and the British army.
That said, let us go down south. Between 1792 and the period
when the Tellicherry Cricket Club was opened in 1860, the only mentions are related
to Wellesley and not substantiated.
Arthur Wellesley had come down with his troops to capture the Pazhassi
raja, a period when TH Baber was the district Judge at Tellicherry. Towards
late March 1800, Wellesley had travelled down from Seringapatam through Coorg
and down the pass, to Cannanore. He reached Cannanore on the 3rd of April 1800
and was busy trying to subdue the Pazhassi Raja for another 4 years, based at Cannanore
and Tellicherry. After settling down, did he try to play any cricket in one of
the parade grounds? We find no documentary evidence but there is a lot of lore
around it.
Considering that he did play earlier in Seringapatam and had
been playing cricket while schooling at Eaton, most people conclude, that he
played the game regularly, ever since. His biographer Elizabeth Longford, however,
clarifies that while at Eaton, even the most casual cricket or boating did not
attract Arthur, even when he spotted a cricket match underway. But play he did
– for we can see that in August 1792 during the Garrison and All-Ireland game, the
defeated military team had a player named Arthur Wesley (Hon. A. Wesby on the score
sheet). Captain George Elers - 12th
Regiment of Foot, mentions in his memoirs of playing cricket with his regiment
buddies, circa 1804, as well also other games such as quoits, and long bullets.
So, by conjecture, Wellesley may have promoted cricket at the local grounds he
stayed at. Muthiah in his Chepauk book mentions vaguely- that Arthur
Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, formed, it is believed, a Cricket club
in Seringapatam in 1799, after Tippu Sultan had fallen and Wellesley had been
put in charge of Mysore.
Let’s get back to Tellicherry and its parade ground, located between the sea and the fort. It is said that in those early years, soldiers used to play at the parade ground when not soldiering or marching. And that is where, according to Puducheri Musa Sahib, the caretaker of the bungalow across the ground where the players once lounged, a water well was situated. I chanced on this tidbit from a lovely article penned by K Balakrishnan the esteemed journalist and writer. Let me at the outset provide due acknowledgment to Balakrishnan and his work – this article uses some of his inputs.
Though the exact location of the well is not quite clear to
me, it must have been in the vicinity as marked. As the soldiers found to their
dismay, a well-whacked ball, perhaps a full toss or a rank bad ball, ended up
in this well on the periphery of the grounds, much to the disgust of the
players, an event which always ensured a stop of play.
Now as one can expect the British did not wash their clothes
and hired dhobis or washermen to do it. Thus, a Dhobis’ colony had sprung up
somewhere around the well area, which water they used (clothes were dried on
the ground), and a few vagabond boys squatting at the periphery and watching
the game would plunge into the well, retrieve the ball and fling it back to the
bowler. Time went by and the boys ended up playing country cricket using twigs
for wickets and a local ball, plus a coconut ‘matta’ as a bat. Over time, it
appears that these dhobi boys and some fishermen became members of the cricket group
and played with the soldiers and other Englishmen who were keen on the game.
And that my friends, is the story of the watering well, and its role in the
origin of cricket.
Time went by and the Tellicherry Cricket Club was founded in
1860. Matches were played with regularity and players included luminaries like
Mookoth Kumaran, a writer I have mentioned often He used to say - that playing
cricket with passion would lead to selflessness . . . and a good cricketer will
become a good citizen. His son, the writer and fighter pilot Moorkoth Ramunni retells
many stories, of how his father walked from Cannanore to Tellicherry, played
cricket for the day, and got back at dusk. Interestingly, Ramunni’s brother
Srinivasan was also a good player.
Moorkoth Ramunni adds tidbits like how the Tellicherry players
used to carry dried fish for their counterparts in Coorg, and the favor would
be returned when, during the return match, the Coorg team would bring oranges down
to the plains. Later, many native cricketers proved so much better than their
English opponents that they used to be taken along whenever the regiment was
transferred.
The pitch was laid by an English engineer Anson in 1898, one
which lasted a century. Abu Baker who emulated his wicket-keeping prowess and
stood up to the stumps was known as Anson Abu Baker. Chilton Kattu Hassan took
after Chilton. Kumar Chellappan writing in the Daily Pioneer echoing Balakrishnan
adds - The local players exceeded expectations, excelling in all aspects of
the game. Talented batsmen, bowlers, and fielders emerged, and some quickly
gained prominence. Notable players like Aboobaker, Ahmed, and Kunjipakki became
local legends. Aboobaker was famously nicknamed Anson Aboobaker for his batting
style, which resembled Geoffrey Anson’s, while Kunjipakki earned the title
Sixer Kunjipakki for his crowd-pleasing sixes. Records of Kunjipakki and
Aboobaker’s performances, chronicled in scorebooks imported from England, are
preserved in the Arakkal Home, the ancestral house of the chieftain. This home,
with its panoramic view of the maidan, houses a collection of cricket
memorabilia from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
But there are other documented stories as well, and Herman
Gundert, Malabar’s well-known missionary and literary giant mentions about
cricket being played during his time in Tellicherry, 1839-1859.
There are stories of interesting events too, of how the
police inspector from Calicut named Anandan countered Ceylon’s Saravana Muthu’s
century before lunch, with a century after lunch and before tea! When Saravana
Muthu smacked a sixer which landed in the Juma Masjid, Anandan reciprocated
with a six landing in the same spot.
There is the legend of the Circus master Keeleri Kunhikannan
(Bombayo’s teacher) who proved to be such a ferocious bowler that he had to
stop playing due to the injuries he caused to batsmen playing without guards
and helmets! Some events bring a smile to your lips, of how sixer Kunhipakki’s
shot cleared the grounds and landed in the district court, shattering the tiles
and startling a sitting judge who calmed down and muttered – oh! They are
playing cricket, mind not, let them play!
More than all that, some families could field their teams
like the famed Mambally family - the well-known bakers of the region, the EK
family, the Acharathu family, and the Parambath Moplahs. Kottieth Lakshmanan
whom we read about in a previous article was a well-known player, and well, the
list goes on and on, reestablishing the claim that Tellicherry holds the
preeminence when it comes to Cricket. Such was their love for the game of
Cricket. I must add here that Cannanore also had a cricket field in the 1870s,
but a report mentions that only a few games were played there.
Richard F Burton writing about his visit to Malabar and
Nilgiris in the 1850s mentions that Ooty had a cricket club, but it appears no
matches took place, though you could buy a membership for 2 shillings per
mensem.
Calicut was not far behind, we know of the cricket club
there, the many players, and of course the matches played in Mananchira during
the Canterbury festival that I wrote about some years ago. Every October,
Calicut hosted Canterbury Week - largely attended by the coffee planters of
Coorg, Mysore, Wynad, and Nilgiris. There were races on a racecourse, about
five furlongs round, cricket, racquets, and the like, and every night a dance
or a big dinner, or some other function which was protracted to the small
hours. The races were the principal item. At Calicut, there was a good number
of Englishmen living there too and Sreejith tells us that - Matches were
organized involving both the whites as well as the natives. Weekend matches
were played at Mananchira Maidan in Calicut where clubs from Tellicherry,
Palghat, Kannur as well as distant Ceylon and Mangalore participated.
After the British left, the interest in the game receded and
Football perhaps took over. The Kerala State Cricket Association was run under the
stewardship of GV Raja from the Travancore Royal family, who started it
together with some members of the Cochin royals. That was the Travancore
-Cochin cricket association. Raja was at its helm for 13 years and later became
the VP of the Indian cricket board. Nevertheless, the region boasted few good
players and was hardly noticed at the national level.
Stray mentions can be found of Balan Pandit, whose 262 not
out against Andhra, and Sreekumar Nair who made an unbeaten 306 against
Services in 2017. In the mid-80s, skipper K. Jayaram scored four centuries in
five Ranji matches. Before the bowlers Tinu Yohanan and S. Sreesanth played for
India, Kerala fans could only talk of players who had some parental connection
with Kerala, like Ajay Jadeja or Robin Uthappa (whose mothers were from
Kerala). Or Sunil Valson, K.P. Bhaskar, Devdutt Padikkal, and Varun, who were
born elsewhere. Sanju Samson continues to be somewhat erratic when not simply
brilliant while Kerala’s home team batters, Salman Nizar, 27, has 607 runs, and
Mohammed Azharuddeen, 30, has 601. In 1973, the Kerala CM’s 11 which beat Sri
Lanka, was captained by Salim Durrani, the team included Gundappa Viswanath and
BS Chandrasekar as well!
Even though the Englishmen professed that gentlemen and good
soldiers were or should have been cricket players, you will see an absence of
caste Hindus in the early history of the sport, then dominated by Moplahs and
Tiyyas of Tellicherry & Cannanore. Well, one can only guess that it was due
to the caste strictures. While Brahmins had to handle cowhide leather, caste Hindus
of Malabar perhaps stayed away from the game since Moplahs, Christians, and Tiyyas
were playing in the team.
It has all changed, from the days when we dreaded carrying
the heavy mat from the college stores to a distant ground, a hideous and
horrendously heavy bit of kit and certainly no fun playing on, compared to the hard
pitches today!
References
The spirit of Chepauk – S Muthiah
Memoirs - George Elers
Pazhassiyum Kadathanadum – K Balakrishnan
The middle class in colonial Malabar - A Social History - Sreejith K.
The Evolution of Thalassery Cricket – The Pioneer Jan3, 2025, Kumar Chellappan
Tellicherry's Rise to Prominence in Indian Cricket History
Tailpieces
Arthur Wellesley, hero of Waterloo, was visiting his
old secondary school at Eton when he spotted a cricket match underway. "
The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”, the iron Duke is
purported to have said. Most historians doubt he ever said that, for it was
attributed to him much later, in 1889, 40 years after his death. Nevertheless,
Cricket gained fame since then and became a gentleman’s game, and it made it
conditional that Gentlemen and good British soldiers should have a cricketing
history. Interestingly Wellesley took
Lady Jane Lennox to a cricket match, some days before facing off with Napolean.
He was certainly some guy - Lady Caroline Chapel says he used to amuse himself
humbugging the ladies, particularly the Duchess of Richmond!
Why is a wicket called so? The earliest cricket was
played against wicket gates in the Middle Ages by peasants. We learn from the
M.C.C. film ‘Cricket in Ireland’ that the game was imported into England by
Anglo-Irish landlords. Now there are also arguments that it was picked up from
India’s Gulli Danda, much like Shakespeare was Sheshappa Iyer who took a ship
to England.
Moorkot Ramunni - joined the IAF after graduating
from the Presidency College, Madras, and was the first IAF pilot from the
state, and saw action during the Second World War. He was posted at Air
Headquarters, Delhi, after the war. After Independence, he was deputed to the
Union Cabinet secretariat and later appointed chief instructor at the National Defense
Academy. He was later involved in the administration of Nagaland and
Laccadives.
A Kerala player and later secretary of the
association (Suresh Menon Hindu article dated Feb 26th, 2025), K.V.
Kelappan Thampuran, invented the 50-over game in 1951. This was the Pooja
All-India tournament, a decade before the Midlands Knockout Cup was played in
England and 12 years before the Gillette Cup there. He invented the popular
format — which led to the World Cup and the current Champions Trophy — for a
very practical reason. He wanted to run an all-India tournament in Tripunithara,
a small town in Kochi, but there was not much time for the existing formats
(three days and two days).
Sunny Master & the Fishmonger (Indian Express May
16, 2012) - The towns of Cannanore and Tellicherry are the oldest cricket-playing
rival teams in India — the English tea and coffee planters in Wynad and their
garrison stationed in Cannanore were the initial sources of players and cricket
is said to have been played in Tellicherry when the set of stumps was two. The archrival
teams were playing a match in Tellicherry sometime in the ’30s. Amongst the
onlookers was a Moplah fishmonger well acquainted with the nuances of the game.
He had taken time off from his work to watch the match. Lying beside him were
the two baskets of fish and the yoke. At a critical stage, a Tellicherry
batsman hit one high into the air and a rival fielder was under it to pouch the
‘dolly’, when the umpire Sunny Master belatedly declared it a no-ball. This
blatant prejudice on the part of the umpire enraged the fishmonger who grabbed
the yoke and stormed onto the ground shouting expletives. What the spectators
saw next was Sunny Master hoisting up his umpiring coat and running for dear
life. He ran into a nearby cemetery and hid behind a tomb, thus escaping the
wrath of the fishmonger. This incident epitomizes the spirit of cricket and
makes it the great game that it is. The fishmonger was from Tellicherry and was
a huge supporter of his team. Yet he felt that the spirit of cricket had been
vitiated. He wanted his team to win but by fair means.
Talking of fishermen, did you know that Sunil Gavaskar,
who was born in 1949 in Mumbai, was swapped by a fisherman's newborn child? It
was Gavaskar's uncle who in horror realized that the child was not Sunny. After
a frantic search through the area, the uncle managed to locate Sunil who was at
the time in a fisherwoman's crib.
An 1843 report in the Colonial Magazine mentions that
in the winter season, Europeans are wont to resort for amusement to the
athletic exercise of cricket; for which the indolent natives, by the bye, look
upon them as absolute maniacs. The latter specially abominate this sport, as
being the acme of drudgery; and, egad, so it must be in the tropics! It was
capricious fashion who introduced cricket into the country, and not the bona
fide inclinations of his silly votaries. Whilst we are alluding to cricket playing,
it may be mentioned, en passant, that a Hindoo has seldom or ever been known to
catch a cricket ball; when desired to stop one and deliver it, he usually runs
alongside the ball till its volant power is spent, and then as warily avoids
contact with it, as anyone would avoid a red-hot poker.
There was, however, a few years back, known to Calcutta
cricket players, a native enjoying the soubriquet of "Mutton," who,
though not much of a dabster at "catching," " bowling," or
"batting,' would intercept the flying ball with rare courage, interposing
his person in a very grotesque position, rather than the ball should enjoy its
mid-air career. "Mutton" was consequently considered a rara avis.
Cricket associations abound; that at Calcutta being the principal and giving
tone to all others. Wickets are pitched on the Calcutta ground, and matches of
consequence are frequently played, throughout the months of November and
December. Some idea of the facility with which cricket is played in the tropics
may be formed by reading the descriptions of the sport written by resident
writers in the Indian papers.
Maddy’s ramblings, Historic Alleys – Related stories
Malabar European Club
Ratnavelu’s tragic story
Those 22 yards
Good Ole Choyi
Kannan Bombayo
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