Kolkata Police shares historical facts on cricket & its close ties with the city
Kolkata: As the city gears up for the semi-finals of ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 which will be played at Eden Gardens on November 16 and at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on November 15, Kolkata Police shared the glimpses of sports and its historical ties with the ‘city of joy’ on their social media.
As part of their Sunday series sharing historical facts on different parts of the city, Kolkata Police chose to share facts and pictures on early years of the sport in the city which is home to the world’s second oldest cricket club.
Established in 1792 by the East India Company officials, the ‘Calcutta Cricket Club Clippers’ allowed only Europeans at the time. The world’s oldest cricket club is Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) founded in 1987.
As enthusiasm for the club matches grew — still confined to Europeans — so did the crowds, until around 1840 when a boundary fence was built around the grounds to keep the non-players from running onto the fields. They also shared the opening of Eden Gardens, which came into existence in the early 1840s. The Calcutta Cricket Club shifted to a portion of Eden Gardens in 1864 and for the first time, had its own pavilion.
When did Indians actually start playing cricket? Did that begin in Calcutta too? Although no one date can be determined, Kolkata Police shared that contemporary accounts from the British cantonments in Sylhet (Bangladesh), Barrackpore, Dum Dum and Midnapore suggested that sepoys picked up the basics of cricket and in no time improved in it too.
The fear of defeat was so entrenched that when the Town Club founded as a cricket club by Sarada Ranjan Ray in 1884 and requested the Calcutta Cricket Club for a match the same year, the refusal was swift and firm.
“It wasn’t until 1895 that Ray finally persuaded the Europeans to accept his invitation for a match, though we haven’t been able to find out what the result was!” KP shared and further concluded: “The next time you walk past CCFC or Eden Gardens, see if the history speaks to you too.”
