The 1st record we have of cricket being played in India is from 1721, an account of recreational cricked played by English sailors Cambay.The 1st Indian club,the Calcutta Cricket Club was established in 1792. Through the 18Th century,cricket in India was almost wholly a sport played by British military men and civil servants in all white clubs and gymkhanas.
The origins of the Indian cricket are to be found in Bombay(Mumbai) and the first Indian community to start playing the game was the small community of the Parsis.Brought into close contact with the British because of their interest in trade and the first Indian community to westernise,the parsis founded the first Indian cricket club,the oriental cricket club in Bombay(Mumbai) in 1848.Parsi clubs were funded and sponsored by parsi businessmen.The white cricket elite in India offered no help to the enthusiastic parsis.In fact,there was a quarrel between the Bombay(Mumbai) gymkhana,a white only club and parsi cricketers over the use of a public park.The parsis complained that the park was left unfit for cricket because the polo ponies of the Bombay(Mumbai) gymkhana dug up the surface.
When it became clear that the colonial authorities were prejudiced in favour of their white compatriots,the parsis built their own gymkhana to play cricket in.The rivalry between the parsis and the Bombay(Mumbai) gymkhana had a happy ending for these pioneers of Indian cricket.Parsi team beat the Bombay(Mumbai) gymkhana at cricket in 1889,just 4 years after the foundation of the Indian national congress in 1885,an organisation that was lucky to have amongst its early leaders the great parsi statesman and intellectual Dadabhai Naroji.
India entered the world of test cricket in 1932,a decade and a half before it become an Independent nation.This was possible because test cricket from its origins in 1877 was organised as a contest between different parts of the British empire, not sovereign nations.
The 1st test was played between England and Australia when Australia was still a white-settler colony.
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