The indefatigable R. S. Surtees referred to fox hunting as being the image of war with none of the guilt and ‘five and twenty percent of the danger’. With its varying rhythms, shifting tempi and intermittent moments of drama interspersed with what the uninitiated might see as periods of ineffable tedium, cricket, in its purest form, embodies at least some elements of Surtees’s definition. For the Victorian and Edwardian middle classes, imbued with the gentlemanly creed of amateurism, the game was in many ways the epitome of manliness. Besides demanding from its players a degree of skill and proficiency, cricket emphasised the virtues of courage, endurance, fortitude, self-discipline, style, loyalty and, perhaps above all, obedience to a well-established canon of rules. Such qualities, of course, were among those grafted on to the many English public schoolboys who, with varying degrees of success, were to undertake the management of the vast and seemingly endless overseas Empire.

As the nineteenth century drew towards its close and Britain’s status as a military and economic power seemed threatened by various foreign quarters, the cohesion and integrity of the Empire was thought to be of paramount importance. And nowhere was this more essential than in India where a rising tide of nationalism was causing sleepless nights for colonial administrators and officials. The British had long played cricket on dusty maidans throughout India, and many locals (especially among the middle-class Parsi community of Bombay) had taken up the game with great enthusiasm. Could a shared interest in cricket be exploited as an instrument of soft Imperial power? Could cricket help in some way to extinguish some of the elements of sedition smouldering throughout the subcontinent? Was it possible that regular visits of amateur players from Britain and a tour of Indian players to the Mother Country might somehow help unite the rulers and the ruled?

In an elegantly written and leisurely paced book, Prashant Kidambi addresses these questions against the background of the extraordinary story of the first Indian cricket tour of England in the Coronation year of 1911. This would be the first time a subject people were to confront, on the sports fields of their own country, teams from the ruling race. Earlier efforts to promote interracial understanding through cricket foundered on the shoals of sheer prejudice and mutual incomprehension, largely on the part of the English and Anglo-Indian press. When Lord Hawke’s 1892 side were defeated by a Parsi team, the European press was appalled at the thought of crack English players being overcome by ‘a team of fire-worshippers’, and there were spiteful comments when the English narrowly won the return game. The Indians, it was claimed, had no notion of ‘sportsmanship’ and the local crowd failed ‘to take the result in good spirit’. The upshot was that these early encounters left little room for optimism and the cultural divide merely emphasised the degree of racial estrangement.

In England cricket enthusiasts had for some time been spellbound by the batting exploits of the brilliant and flamboyant Rajput prince and Cambridge cricket blue Ranjitsinhji who (against various racially-based objections), had played for England against Australia in 1896. It was proposed by, among others, the redoubtable Framjee Patel, that Ranji lead an all-Indian team to England in 1911. Ranji, however, preoccupied with pursuing his claim to the Navangar crown and, in any case, viewing himself as an English cricketer (with the implied cache) was less than enthusiastic. In his stead the bon viveur Bhupinder Singh, Ruler of Patalia in the Punjab was appointed as captain of a side that included Hindus, Parsis and Moslems. Although the titular captain, Bhupinder’s cricketing skills were less impressive than his appearance and demeanour, besides which, much of his time in England was taken up with polo, socialising and meetings with British statesmen and the new king. The Indian side comprised seven Parsis, three Moslems, three upper-class Brahmins and the exceptionally skilled Baloo brothers from the Dalit (Untouchable) class. Of these, Palwankar Baloo emerged to become one of the great left-arm spin bowlers of the early twentieth century. Kidambi offers biographical details of individual players, discusses aspects of the funding of the tour, the attitudes (generally favourable) of the English press, the travails of the sea crossing and an abundance of fascinating detail. To British readers many of his Indian characters will be unfamiliar, while Indian students of cricket will have heard of few of the British individuals involved with the tour. But when he touches upon issues of caste and class and writes of the growing interest in India of physical culture as a means of counteracting negative stereotypes of degeneration and lack of manliness perpetrated by sections of the Anglo-Indian press, both cricket lovers and others will find much on which to ponder.

The Indians had arrived in a country plagued by Suffragette militancy, industrial strikes and Home Rule agitation, all taking place under the fiery skies of the hottest summer in centuries. Concurrently it was a summer of unprecedented Imperial ritual punctuated with exhibitions and sporting events, with their own games against various county sides playing an important part. If the tour helped briefly to foster Anglo-Indian relations, the rising tide of nationalism following the Great War would advance unabated. Prashant Kidambi’s fair, well-balanced and admirable book is first and foremost about a cricket tour. But it is about much more besides; it is about race relations, the issues of caste, perceptions of racial superiority and, in particular, the determination of spirited individuals, both Indian and British, to foster the development of the greatest and most civilised game created by the wit of man. It is a long book and would have benefited from a little closer editing to avoid an element of repetition. But this is carping criticism of a beautifully written and comprehensively researched volume. India is now unquestionably the powerhouse of world cricket and from those early beginnings described by Kidambi have emerged to god-like status the titanic figures of Sachin Tendulkar, M. S. Dhoni and Virat Kohli, those great ambassadors for the game who have long brought such pleasure to the Indian people and the rest of the cricketing world.