RANJI joined Sussex in 1895, and quickly became a popular favourite for his dashing strokeplay and trademark leg glance. He toured Australia with England in the winter of 1897-98, and finished the 1900 season with a first-class average of over eighty-seven.

He was, moreover, not a dispossessed prince much longer: in 1907, Ranjitsinhji succeeded at last to the throne of Nawanagar.* His administrator, Colonel Berthon, now began working with Edwin Lutyens to transform what Ranji once called Jamnagar’s ‘evil slum’ into ‘the Jewel of Kathiawar’, lowering taxes at the port, modernising agriculture and building railways to stimulate trade, and banish poverty.

Ranjitsinhji had a vision of India as a commonwealth of self-governing princely states under the British Crown, and helped found the Chamber of Princes to advance it. But neither the nationalist Indian National Congress nor Westminster shared his vision, and when Ranjitsinhji died in 1933 and his ashes were scattered on the Ganges, a little more of the Raj slipped away with them.