CRICKET & CASTE CONSCIOUSNESS

Poona Gymkhana, 1892.  As with all other British clubs in pre-independent India, this gymkhana too maintained its exclusive preserve for the colonial masters. No Indian was allowed in as a member, but the downtrodden ‘Dalits' or 'Harijans’ were employed as low-level staffers.

One day a former Hampshire cricketer arrived at the gymkhana ‘net’ for some batting practice and waited for his peers to come. A young groundsman of the club enquired if he could turn his arm round. The player – Jesuit priest John Glennie Greig (1871-1958) – nodded assent.

Within minutes the experienced batter, nicknamed ‘Junglee’ Greig, marvelled at the potential of the spin bowler. The teasing deliveries swerved in, only to turn the other way on pitching. Wide-eyed, he wasted no time to inform his Hindu opponents that they include the rare talent they had missed in their regular Hindu teams.

The Hindus were aghast. How could they – the so-called ‘upper castes’ – allow a ‘low-born outcaste’ to mingle and play with them? Greig reasoned with them, “Every time you play with us, you lose. Why not select the young lad and try to win?”  After much persuasion, the Hindus relented but they refused to share the dining-table with the ‘Harijan’ groundsman during the lunch and tea intervals!

Thankfully the Hindu Gymkhana in cosmopolitan Bombay welcomed him to work and play for them. Palvankar Balloo (1875-1955) played for the Hindu team and went on to win championship matches for them.

 When the first-ever All-India cricket team went to UK in 1911, Balloo was an automatic choice. In England he confounded the sternest of cricket critics, who compared him to Wilfred Rhodes, the best left-arm spinner in the world at the time.

 Left-arm spinner Palvankar Balloo happened to be the first India-made cricketer (as opposed to the India-born prince Ranjitsinhji, who was entirely British-trained) to be rated world-class. A ‘low-born’ was the first to sit on the highest throne of Indian cricket.

 Baloo died in abject poverty but refused to become a Buddhist, as advised by his great supporter, the admirable Dr BR Ambedkar. No award; no reward; no recognition ever came Baloo Palvankar’s way. He remained an outcast till the very end.

Sadly, Baloo Palvankar – India’s first world-class cricketer – has been forgotten in his own homeland.

Photo: courtesy Siasat Daily