Imagine finding a wooden chest half-buried in the sand. You dig it out and scrape the seaweed away. You see a rusty lock. A quick yank and the chest creaks open. For the first time in a hundred years the treasure inside sparkles to the light of day. Well, as a social historian, I have had such an experience just the other day.
Hidden from researchers of South African cricket, literally in a wooden chest, is a remarkable story of a tour to India in 1921/1922 by South African Indians to play a series of cricket and football matches. Seventeen members set sail on this tour: MB Subban, B Maharaj (vice-captain), IE Bhayat, M Doman, S Doorsamy, A Gaffoor, AA Gany, R Jithoo, SL Munpath, RR Pillay, JS Rajpaul, SI Rawat, S Sham, BP Singh and SM Timol. All were South African-born.
The pioneering team of 1921/22
From documents neatly stacked inside this box, it appears that the team was jointly managed by J Soodyall and AI Kajee.
Kajee, starting as an insurance broker, would rise to be a prominent politician and businessman in Durban. Soodyall served in the war in German East Africa and was a well-known sportsman and promoter. He was also a meticulous keeper of documents. The generations that came after him preserved these written trinkets in a trunk, and they were still of high quality when I looked at them in 2023.
The trunk of treasure
The tour took place just as the Aussies came to South Africa. The first Test was played in Durban at Lord’s. Ironically, Soodyall was a season ticket holder but would not be allowed to play at Lord’s. This did not diminish his love of the game, however, and neither did it deter him from rushing to the empire’s trenches when war against the Germans broke out - albeit as a stretcher-bearer rather than as a bearer of arms.
This pioneering group of sportsmen set sail for India on the steamship Karagola late in November 1921. From the letter from the local mayor to the photographs taken in India, this was a tour like no other.
Mayor’s letter
They only returned some three-and-a-half months later, early in March 1922. They visited Bombay, Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Chinchura, Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi, Madras and Poona. The team carried a letter dated 29 November 1921 from the mayor of Durban, Fleming Johnston, testifying that they were ‘well-known residents of Natal, respected not only by their fellow Indians in the field of sport, but also by the European community’.
The tourists did not represent the cream of South African Indian cricket, partly because the focus was on football rather than cricket. Several of the best players could not get nearly four months' leave to go along. Nevertheless, the team contained some fine all-round sporting talent, and by this, I mean not only men who could bat and bowl, but dribble and shoot too.
This unusual team played 14 football games in various cities in India and two cricket matches in Calcutta against the Presidency College XI on 14 January 1922 and Mohun Bagan the following day.
Against College, the South Africans impressed the spectators as fine cricketers. In a curtailed game, South Africa scored 108/4 and College replied with 74/5. SM Timol took 2-9 and S Sham 2-19. Maharaj scored 31 and Subban 33 not out. Against Bagan, South Africa scored 100/6 before making a ‘sporting declaration’. Bagan replied with 229/2, M Das scoring 102 not out.
Maharaj scored 51 and Subban 22 for South Africa. Statesman described Maharaj’s batting as “very sound, specially on the leg, and he contributed 51 which included eight boundaries”. Latest (26 March 1921) described Maharaj as:
A rapid scorer, and can score all round the wicket with the same ease. There seems no particular bowling that he cannot master. He is quick on his feet, and his display of running between the wickets is faultless. In the field he is clever and reliable, but his best position is coverpoint, where he is absolutely brilliant.
Baboolall Maharaj (1884-1935), the vice-captain, was an athlete’s athlete. Hailing from Pretoria, he captained a rugby club, Pretoria Standard Fifteen, for 11 years. He also played football for Transvaal and represented Transvaal Coloureds in cricket in 1907, 1909 and 1923, in addition to excelling in weightlifting, cycling, boxing and swimming.
The tourists became known as Christopher’s Contingent, named after Albert Christopher, who led the corps of stretcher-bearers in the First World War. They certainly seemed to carry with them the blessings of St Christopher too with several highlights to their travels.
At Ahmedabad, they met Mahatma Gandhi who spent time with them.
Humorously, when the team went for a swim in the River Hooghly in Calcutta, a large crowd gathered. Locals were left, “staring in amazement”, and the tourists were regarded with something approaching awe at having escaped the clutches of the treacherous current. The team decided not to risk it again. The sportsmen also visited the Legislative Assembly, a visitor’s card meticulously preserved.
One squad member, Billy Subban, caught the imagination of the Indian public for his football achievements. Against Mohun Bagan, Statesman reported that the game will “long be remembered for the excellent goalkeeping of Billy Subban. His calm manner and prowess reminded the sporting crowd of Summerfield’s goalkeeping a few seasons back”.
Against the European Combined XI, Billy Subban's goalkeeping saved the South African side from a heavy defeat. His punching and clearing won the admiration of the crowd and Billy is ranked among the best India has seen’ (Latest 4 March 1922). Billy Subban was indeed one of the finest Indian sportsmen during the early decades of the 20th century. Born in Verulam in 1881, he joined Pirates of India FC in 1898 as goalkeeper, subsequently joining Greyville (1903-1917) and Sydenham where he saved countless shoo-in goals.
Subban represented Durban for 18 consecutive years in football, was an excellent cyclist, winning numerous five-, three- and one-mile Natal championships, and took part in the first Indian cycle race from Durban to Pietermaritzburg in 1901.
Subban played cricket for Pirates, Blue Bells, Railways and Schools. In local circles he was known as “Indian Nourse“, in reference to the great South African Test cricketer AW (Dave) Nourse. Billy Subban had a body to match his prowess on sports fields. He was tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built but soft-spoken, and a modest man. A baker by profession, when the team returned from India, he was dismissed from his job at Lowther’s Bakery in Alice Street, where he had worked for 20 years.
When the team returned, a welcome reception was organised at the Tamil Institute. Chairman JM Francis regarded them as “pioneers who had gone to India to open up a connection with that country which would lead to an interchange of visits”. This view was highly optimistic. As apartheid became the official ideology of South Africa, India stood at the forefront of exposing its inequities.
Meanwhile, back on home ground, the Group Areas Act had a devastating effect on non-racial cricket in the mid-1960s. As the president of the Natal Cricket Board (NCB) reported in September 1965, “the settled population is forced to shift in different directions. Old friends are being lost. Durban and its districts are the hardest hit”.
Stalwart unions like Mayville and the South Coast were decimated and withdrew from the NCB. But as people arrived in the barren townships, they began to build cricket clubs once more. In Chatsworth, a cricket union was formed in 1965. A cricket pitch of grit was laid out in Road 217.
The council allowed two more grit wickets in 1968. There were no covers, so the slightest rain made the pitch unplayable. But cricket flowered and by the beginning of the 1960s, 11 clubs were registered in Chatsworth. The main centre of non-racial cricket was Springfield Grounds. And then Springfield was taken away.
But the game was kept alive and a century after the tour to India we must remember those who gave so much to keep the game alive and expected so little in return.
* Acknowledgement: Thanks to Arish Soodyall for access to the documents related to the tour.
Ashwin Desai is Professor of Sociology and SARCHI Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. His latest book, Of Fathers, Sons and Timeless Tests: Wicket Tales from Kingsmead, will be published in November 2023.