Introduction
In 1907, Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji Jadeja (1872-1933) triumphantly ascended the throne of Nawanagar (Jamnagar) in India, twenty-three years after the bitter disappointment of seeing a rival displace him. It was not part-time work, so in 1912 Ranji called ‘stumps’ on his spectacular career in English cricket, and A. G. Gardiner of ‘The Star’ bade him an affectionate farewell.
THEY loved him from the first for the novelty of the thing. It was as though a pet kitten had begun to talk Tariff Reform. It is the Jam Sahib’s supreme service that, through his genius for the English game, he has familiarised the English people with the idea of the Indian as a man of like affections with ourselves, and with capacities beyond ours in directions supposed to be peculiarly our own.*
We do not judge a cricketer so much by the runs he gets as by the way he gets them. There are dull, mechanic fellows who turn out runs with as little emotion as a machine turns out pins. Cricket is not an adventure; to them it is a business. It was so with Shrewsbury.* His technical perfection was astonishing; but the soul of the game was wanting in him. There was no sunshine in his play, no swift surprises or splendid unselfishness. And without these things, without gaiety, daring, and the spirit of sacrifice, cricket is a dead thing. Now, the Jam Sahib has the root of the matter in him.
* “He worked an entire revolution in the manner in which Indian Princes were regarded by Englishmen” wrote historian and civil servant Laurence Rushbrook-Williams (1890–1978). “Hence it was that from him, many Englishmen came to realise that differences in the pigmentation of the skin matter very little.” Rushbrook-Williams believed this had even oiled the wheels of Indian independence. “It may well be doubted whether the Government of India Act of 1919 would ever have been passed, if the Ministry and the back-benchers alike had not seen something of ‘Ranji’ in the lineaments of the Indian whom they pictured in their mind as the subject of their legislation.”
* Arthur Shrewsbury (1856-1903). “Say what you will,” warned W. G. Grace, “the cricket-loving public likes lively batting, and for this reason, that is, for the good of cricket, I think hitters should be encouraged... As a proof that the public do really prefer rapid scoring to the most finished and perfect batsmanship of the slow order, it is only necessary to remind readers of the way that the steady, not to say tedious, play of Scotton, Shrewsbury, and sometimes even Gunn killed for a time all interest in Notts county cricket.”
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