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'Ranji' – Part 2 – with Simon Wilde
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In the second part of my chat with The Sunday Times cricket correspondent, Simon Wilde, we discuss Ranjitsinhji's batting style and how he changed the appearance of 'batsmanship', the fluctuating fortunes of his only Test tour - that to Australia in 1897-98, his dramatic drop in form in 1902, and his less than successful return to cricket in 1920 with only one eye.
ABOUT SIMON WILDE:
Simon Wilde has covered five cricket World Cups and more than 250 England Test matches as the cricket correspondent of The Sunday Times. He has written 12 books, including the bestselling England: The Biography, which chronicles the story of the men's national team since 1877, and his latest publication is The Tour: The Story of the England Cricket Team Overseas 1877-2022. His biography Ranji: The Strange Genius of Ranjitsinhji was shortlisted for The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.
CREDITS:
Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara's remarkable collection of wax cylinder's from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Introduction
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the second part of this podcast dedicated to the great Indian cricketer of the golden age, K.S. Ranjit Singhji.
Biography of Ranjit Singhji
00:00:17
Speaker
My guest is Simon Wilde, cricket correspondent for the Sunday Times, whose biography, Ranji, the strange genius of Ranjit Singhji, is the basis of our discussion.
00:00:28
Speaker
Be sure to follow or subscribe to the Golden Age of Cricket podcast so you'll never miss an episode.
Ranjit's Batting Style and Innovations
00:00:36
Speaker
Now back to his actual batting and his style and his approach to batsmanship. One thing which is very apparent reading your book is you know you go into details about his certainly his more successful innings but what struck me was just how he tended to dominate the strike and just by way of example you know often you would say that he had a partnership of
00:01:05
Speaker
150 with batsman x but Ranji actually hit 130 of those runs he seemed to have this ability and i think i'm correct in saying that certainly for that age he hit a lot of boundaries and we've touched on it already maybe it was the
00:01:26
Speaker
you know, these new strokes that he brought in like the leg glance, for example, which confused a lot of the fielding teams. And he just seemed to be someone who loved facing the cricket ball. And so he would hit boundaries to retain the strike.
00:01:41
Speaker
which was very smart. Do you think this was just a clever tactic on his part, a very smart tactic, or was there something greater at play? Was he living up to his princely manner perhaps and having a sense of entitlement?
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, possibly. I think the key was that because he had opened up the leg side of the field, he could basically score all around the wicket. I mean, this is now in the modern era, we know all about players sitting three and, you know, we talked about 360 degree batsmen, they can hit anywhere. But in those days, a lot of the field was not available to them in a way they didn't think to score.
00:02:25
Speaker
towards fine leg you know off your hips in the same way that wasn't that wasn't done so much I don't think so once he'd once he developed an all-round game he could find the gaps in the field they couldn't there's the opposing captains will suddenly find it hadn't got enough fielders for energy you know he they needed 15 men rather than 11 so he could find the gaps he could hit the boundaries he was he was if you're if you're an all-round
00:02:52
Speaker
So if you can score all around the wicket, then it becomes very hard to set a field. So I think that probably explains the, his ability to hit so many boundaries, which was certainly the case. He was a prolific boundary hitter. I mean, not so much sixes in those days, though you couldn't hit sixes unless you hit it right out of the ground. So it was talking about, or fives. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of fours. Um, so I'd say that was one of the explanations for that.
Challenges of the Australian Tour
00:03:17
Speaker
Let's talk about his only international test tour. I think he made a tour to the USA at one point but his only test tour was that to Australia in 1897-98 where it's fair to say he had an uneasy relationship with the public
00:03:38
Speaker
and the press. I mean, I think it started off in a bit of a rocky way. I think the New South Wales government had to change their policy about letting a non-white person into the colony. But then there were some intriguing incidents that were played out in the press. Ernie Jones, who was the fast Australian
00:04:01
Speaker
South Australian bowler was called for throwing in England's match versus South Australia and in one of his articles Ranji tended to agree with the umpire which didn't go down too well with the locals as you'd expect and that then was the Adelaide press, South Australian press retaliated by claiming that
00:04:30
Speaker
Ranji didn't have the right to play for England as a non-white player. What do you make of all this Simon? I mean it's his first tour to Australia and he seems to be you know rocking the apple cart. Was this indicative of who Ranji was?
00:04:46
Speaker
I think it was, I mean, this is a tricky one. The Australian crowds then, and some would say, still like to express their opinion at a match. And I think that was quite different to how English crowds behaved. I mean, not saying that English crowds were perfect at all, but there's a definite, if you read the accounts of English crickets going to Australia,
00:05:09
Speaker
The story is quite consistent about this, that they get English creators got quite upset at some of the heckling that they got and the sort of feedback from the crowd, Andrew Stoddard, the captain of the one tour that Randy went to, he got very upset by some of his treatment from the locals and also the local press as well. The criticism could be quite harsh and really Australia was the only country that England toured.
00:05:33
Speaker
where, in a way, things mattered. There were tours of South Africa, but it was a far lower key sort of environment and the local press was not.
00:05:45
Speaker
aggressive at all, and the locals in South Africa. I mean, these were in South Africa. South Africa was an even younger country in Australia. And a lot of the people that were there were English, people who had just emigrated to take advantage of gold and diamonds that were being found. So it was another piece of England, really, whilst Australia had developed its own identity and was quite
00:06:11
Speaker
brash, if you like. And so the English critics in general found that quite hard to deal with, particularly if they started losing. And this is what happened on the tour that Ranji went and even lost four of the five test matches. So I think Ranji wasn't the only one in that team who found it a bit rough going. But the difference with Ranji was that he had agreed to write a series of pieces for
00:06:33
Speaker
Australian magazine, a sort of weekly periodical. And so he was expressing his own opinions about what was going on on a regular basis. And this stuff got read and he got quoted in Australian papers. So he was not, again, not the first critic to find out that if you start, you start writing stuff and complaining, then people notice and you'll get a bit of a fight back.
00:06:58
Speaker
And yes, as you say, he supported the verdict on early James's bowling. Was it legitimate or not? He didn't seem to think so. That didn't go down well. He was probably a bit naive in what he was doing. He didn't know any better. He was still quite young. He was 25. And he just wrote it before. There's lots of things that other players have gone through as well. Happened to him.
00:07:24
Speaker
but I think it was of a piece really of the English cricketers complaining about quite a lot he complained about the flies in Adelaide and you know the heat and the travel and but I think there was on a more you know more profound note but probably he probably did experience a bit of racism as well as he complained in fact one of the other England players Jacka and he kept a diary and he talked about Ranji in his diary saying Ranji was upset by
00:07:50
Speaker
Australians in general. He didn't lie to them. I suspect he had a bit of trouble on that front, but we don't really have the concrete evidence on that.
00:08:05
Speaker
But we have to say, at the same time, in a disastrous tour for the English, he did find some on-field success in that tour. I mean, he hit a blistering 175, I think, in the Sydney test, which was only his third test overall, I think.
00:08:26
Speaker
Um, and, uh, yeah, as you say, it was a, it was an overall disastrous test for England. Um, and he also, we should give him credit that he actually made a tour to Australia because some of the other amateurs of that time, CB Fry, he's very good friend and, uh, and Stanley Jackson never made it to Australia. So, um, credit, credit to Ranji for actually, uh, coming to Australia at least once as, uh, as, as an amateur.
00:08:55
Speaker
And as you say, he did do well. And he wasn't people people liked his passing, but he was not. It wasn't a case of Australians as a whole didn't like him. I think they did. They liked his cricket and they liked his style of play. And he was a very glamorous figure to them as he was to people in England as well. So he was he was an attractive figure as well. But some of the things he said, of course, some upset. But interesting, he never went back. And I think, you know, there was some subsequent Australians, he could have gone on.
00:09:24
Speaker
and he didn't and I think there was a feeling that he didn't want to go back after what had happened on that particular trip that he wasn't that happy a time for. Fair enough.
Financial Struggles & Ascension
00:09:40
Speaker
Now something that is permeating all through his cricket career at this stage and continues to for a number of years, not known to the general public but
00:09:53
Speaker
One that we now know through studying the history is that he had just all sorts of problems with his finances. He was constantly asking for his allowance from India to be increased and he was constantly being chased by creditors.
00:10:13
Speaker
um did he did he spend money because he thought he had to maintain this appearance of wealth or or do you think he was just plain do you think he was just plain reckless yeah it's a good question it's an intriguing one but i i suspect that he he wanted to behave like a prince he had to keep up this um this act if you like that he he was a
00:10:41
Speaker
He was a significant figure back in India, nobody in England knew otherwise. Some of the British civil servants would have known that people in government, particularly those who got to hear about him not paying his debts, would have known.
00:10:54
Speaker
a bit more about what the true Ranji was like but they would have probably also known what he was up to I mean it's not it wasn't a name for people not to pay their bills you know it was it wasn't the only one behaving like that but I think it was his way of trying to act out a life of a prince and that was the way he could in a way convince ultimately the people who mattered which was the British government people that
00:11:22
Speaker
He did have a case. And of course, I mean, we can spend a long time talking about how come the young man who did become the new ruler, the young boy that was born and basically leapfrogged Ranji in the succession list, he took over in the early 1900s after his father died from any really chosen Ranji.
00:11:49
Speaker
and then a couple of years later he dies in mysterious circumstances and a friend of Ranji who wrote a book, E.H.D. Sewall, who played for Essex, he was an amateur, he writes an interesting chapter about the rumours of foul play and was poisoned. So you couldn't make it up really.
00:12:11
Speaker
So, you know, it was a very convenient time that he died this this chat, because Randy already was hitting financial difficulties a couple of years before that. And in fact, Ranjit stopped playing cricket in England before he died, because he'd gone back to India supposedly to further his claim. Well, hey, presto, it happened. And then the British
00:12:34
Speaker
Julie chose Ranji in his place because there was no of this line of succession anymore so the British had to get involved and help choose someone and they they chose Ranji and they would have chosen Ranji partly because in their eyes he was he'd been trained up for the job they knew what he was like he was a sort of effectively his Anglo-Indian really in our world he was well educated and they knew or they thought that he would
00:13:01
Speaker
play by their rules, he would be obliging, they could deal with it. He was someone they could do business with, if you like, but of course, as it happens, he was somebody that nobody could do business with, because he kept renaming on his bills, but they thought he was the best man available, and so they helped for, say, his accession, and that happened in 1907, when Randy was sort of in his mid-30s, and after that, he ruled for about 25 years.
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah and just taking a step back, I mean it wasn't like he was at the peak of his form when he just suddenly decided to challenge for the throne. He did actually experience a quite a severe drop in form. I mean he plays what turns out to be his last test match in 1902 against the visiting Australians but at
00:13:52
Speaker
county level, first class level, he has a really bad run of form and then he doesn't play any first class cricket from 1905 to 1907 and this is when he's staking his claim. Do you think this loss of form leading up
00:14:11
Speaker
to his ascension to the throne. Do you think the form was directly related to the financial issues he was having and his plans to challenge for the throne? Yeah, I think, I mean, the particularly striking and intriguing year was 1902, which was a famous year. Australia, the Australians came over, Australia won the Ashes. It's Trump was at his height of his fame. It was a very wet summer. Pictures were difficult for scoring runs. So
00:14:41
Speaker
No batsman apart from Tronker actually really had a good summer. Ranji didn't have a good summer. He struggled and in the test matches he played, he struggled really badly when he was in those sort of form at all. You could blame him partly on the pitches but I think there were issues going on with his finances. In fact we know it because there's some sort of documentary evidence of some cases that were going on at that time and things really were getting a bit tricky for him financially and in terms of the
00:15:08
Speaker
Legal cases against him and he dropped so what's interesting is he drops out of cricket for about a month after He's been dropped by England after the fourth test which he didn't lose by three runs It's a famous match which is called Fred Tate's match cause Fred Tate dropped a catch at the end. Yes
00:15:29
Speaker
towards the end of the game that was crucial to the outcome. And then he was, Fred Tate was the last man I thought that he was bold with England needing three to win. So it was known as Fred Tate's match, but really it shouldn't be known as Ranji's match because Ranji did absolutely nothing in that game. And had he scored 25 in one and England would have won. But he was a sort of shadow of himself really. And England dropped him for the final test, which
00:15:55
Speaker
equally famous game where Gilbert Jessup got a very fast time winning a one-by-one wicket very exciting match. Ranji missed that game never played for him in the game and just sort of disappeared really for several weeks and that seemed to be at a time when he really was in difficulties. He played in 1903 and 1904 for Sussex
00:16:18
Speaker
running hot and cold with his run scoring and I think by that point he'd almost got to the point where he realized that he had to do something about his situation really that he couldn't carry on like this. He didn't have any cash and so he went back to India. The man who was on the throne died in mysterious circumstances and that opened the door to Ranji taking over.
00:16:46
Speaker
So I think that I knew where cricket had served its purpose for him. It had given him fame. It had given him a significant status. And it was time probably in his eyes to move on to other things. He couldn't, he can't keep playing forever. So I think there was a, his focus on cricket was waning and his form was waning.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, but as you allude to there, he would just come and go. I think he returned for some matches in 1908 and then again in 1912 and then perhaps most remarkably as a 47-year-old in 1920,
00:17:29
Speaker
He returns to play just three first-class matches for Sussex and this is after he's lost his right eye in a hunting accident. As you say he was always off hunting and at this stage he's lost all his former. He plays three matches and scores
00:17:51
Speaker
a total of 39 runs at an average of just 9. What were the factors behind him coming back in 1920? Was there something else at play here?
Return to Cricket & Personal Challenges
00:18:06
Speaker
I think it was
00:18:08
Speaker
I don't think, I don't think particularly, I think it was just a, it was almost a sort of vanity thing. Could he still do it? You know, he wanted to know 47, highly unlikely. He's only got one eye. I mean, you know, why did he, why did he allow himself to be persuaded that it might be a good idea? It seems, it seems rather pathetic really, but he should try and unsurprisingly he failed really.
00:18:36
Speaker
You know, it was 1920 and there'd been a lot of, you know, the cricket had started in England after the war in 1919, so this was only the second summer post-war, and there were a lot of people who were playing cricket in those early seasons.
00:18:51
Speaker
after the war was over, that were injured mentally, God knows what some of them were like, but people returned to cricket. In any way, he wasn't the only sort of damaged person who was coming back to, I mean, he wasn't injured in the war, as he said, he was in the shooting accident, but he wasn't the only one who was trying to
00:19:12
Speaker
get returned to a normal life after the horrors of the war. And so he wasn't maybe quite as unusual as it sounded. There was, I mean, bizarrely, there was a guy who played the Northampton show. He had one leg, you know, he had a wooden leg and he played cricket. Again, didn't work. This is sort of what happened. I don't think there was anything in it other than, you know, he thought he'd give it a go. And it didn't work out. But it's a rather sort of sad way
00:19:42
Speaker
For his career to end, there wasn't much record of him playing it, sort of even recreational cricket after the First World War. It really was a one-off.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, we could probably also suggest that it was done out of helping to boost morale for the English public after the First World War. I mean, I think CB Fry played for a few seasons as well, even though his best was probably behind him. I think a few of the so-called Golden Age players in Australia did the same. Clem Hill played some first-class matches in the 1920s as well.
00:20:25
Speaker
um and he was certainly you know of an age where it probably wasn't uh expected of him um so that was perhaps another another factor
00:20:49
Speaker
Simon I just want to, we have touched on it already but I just want to touch again on racism with Ranjit Singhji because he was playing cricket in Victorian England and it seems like they had a very
00:21:11
Speaker
interesting relationship with him and the colour of his skin.
Racism and Social Navigation
00:21:15
Speaker
I've just got this quote from a former English cricketer R. H. Littleton who in 1899 wrote and I quote, the English public is a curious one and one of its peculiarities is its readiness to deify a cricketer all the more because he is not an Englishman and is of a different colour.
00:21:38
Speaker
They would have admired Ranjit Singhji as a white batsman, but they worshipped him because he is black. Was Ranjit subject to racism as we know it today? Yeah, well that's the big question really, isn't it? We only have anecdotal evidence really, very small amounts of evidence that this was the case. I mean England were
00:22:07
Speaker
England were really well some areas of English cricket were reluctant that he should ever play for the English national team I mean he wasn't born in England obviously he would he he was he became an English cricket because he played the English County system and this This made him eligible as I mean there were no strict rules In terms of who is eligible for a test team that in fact those rules were introduced eventually
00:22:36
Speaker
or you'd live there for, I think, four years, something like that. And Ranji would have qualified under that sort of second basis in England for more than four years. But at the time, he presented a challenge to the English authorities, which they had not really faced before.
00:22:56
Speaker
In 1896, when he played his first Test matches, the system that applied was that the host, the ground, the ground that hosted the Test match, their committee would pick the team. So England didn't have a selection panel in 1896. So when the match was at Old Trafford in Lancash, the Lancash committee decided whether he or anyone else would be the team. When he was at Lords, the MCC committee decided, and so on. Sorry, if it was at the, sorry, would decide.
00:23:23
Speaker
And in fact, the MCC committee decided that he wouldn't play the first test of that summer, but the Lancashire committee decided that he would play the second test of the summer.
00:23:32
Speaker
And that's when he got his 100 that we've talked about. So, was the MCC committee being racist in terms of leaving him out? Did they frown upon him because he was not white? We don't really know. It's probably suspicion that that was an element of the decision. And there are some
00:23:57
Speaker
stories of when Wrench got his hundred for England and old Trafford that summer that there were people at the Lord's who criticized him even being allowed. They still weren't happy even though he scored at hundred for England. They were not happy that he played and that he was because of his colour. So there was some circumstantial evidence to support that idea and I'm
00:24:30
Speaker
but I should think that it's often about class as much as anything. Some classes would accept him better than others. Some people with a certain background would accept him better than others. I think he did experience racism and he dealt with it pretty well, really. He navigated his way through the British social system, didn't he?
00:24:57
Speaker
pretty well and ended up somewhere near the top you know by the time Edmond the 7th was on the throne Ranji was going shooting with him you know so it didn't stop him mixing with the top brass in the country that's for sure.
00:25:12
Speaker
No, he seems like a very resilient character actually and considering what he achieved in that time is quite extraordinary really. Well let's turn to a happier subject Simon, let's look at his statistics and I'm just going to read through some numbers, feel free to jump in
00:25:34
Speaker
at any point.
Cricket Statistics and Achievements
00:25:37
Speaker
But we've spoken already about, you know, when he made his debut and his final first class match and test match, but the numbers are really interesting. I'll just, we only ever talk of
00:25:52
Speaker
but I'll quickly go over his bowling because it's not insignificant. At a first-class level he took 133 wickets for 4,601 runs. It was an average of 34.59 but his best bowling
00:26:10
Speaker
was 6 for 53, which is not bad. But at a test level, he only took one test wicket. So his figures are 1 for 23, at an average of 39. This is, I'm going to put you on the spot here, Simon, but do you know, this is a pub trivia sort of question, do you know who Ranji's only test victim was?
00:26:38
Speaker
I don't. I'm hoping you'll tell me. Well, I had no idea and it is one of those very random questions. But anyone listening will then be able to tell their friends. It was JJ Kelly, the Australian wiki keeper. And I think he had him caught behind. I think I'm sure someone listening will be able to correct me. But there you go. If anyone wants to use that as a conversation starter.
00:27:08
Speaker
but turning our attention to his batting which of course is what he's remembered for so he played 15 test matches which actually seems quite few even for that time considering how famous he was he batted 26 times four not outs didn't quite make a thousand runs he hit 989
00:27:31
Speaker
His highest score was 175, which we spoke of was that famous innings at Sydney. He's only tour to Australia. And he finished with two centuries and six half centuries with an average of 44.95.
00:27:49
Speaker
Not surprisingly, his first-class statistics are even more impressive. So 307 matches, 500 exactly times he went to the wicket. He scored 24,692 runs
00:28:10
Speaker
higher score of 285 not out and he had a batting average of 56.37 having scored 72 centuries. A couple of things to note here Simon is that that average first class average of 56.37 as you note in your book was actually the best completed career batting average
00:28:37
Speaker
of any English batsman until Jeffrey Boycott broke it in 1986. So he had a, you know, he had his name at the top of the list for a very long time. What else have I noted here? Oh yes, keeping in what I was talking about earlier about how fast he scored his runs, he scored in first-class cricket 11 pre-lunch session
00:29:06
Speaker
centuries, I suppose, meaning he took his score from whatever it was, say 44, passed 144 before lunch, which is just extraordinary, and he did it on 11 occasions. And finally, and this statistic was one I noted last year,
00:29:26
Speaker
Ranji's name appeared in the news when Harry Brooke, the young English batsman, beat his 125-year record of having scored the most runs in the first six innings of a test career. So we've already noted how Ranji
00:29:46
Speaker
really took to test cricket immediately with his century on debut and then 175 in Sydney. He scored 418 runs in his first six innings and Harry Brooke beat him with 436. So there you go. Ranji is still making headlines a century later. Simon, I just want to finish the podcast talking about
00:30:16
Speaker
Ranji's legacy.
Legacy and Reverence in Indian Cricket
00:30:20
Speaker
He's known today as sort of the father of Indian cricket, I suppose. And the Indian Red Bull domestic competition is named after him. Is he still revered today in cricket circles, both in India and abroad? Yes, he is. I think the Ranji
00:30:45
Speaker
trophy. I mean, it's great that he's, he's named lives on in the Indian domestic competition, you know, almost 100 years since he since he died. That's, you know, it's quite a, quite a, quite a thing, really. And he sees his status in India is slightly ambiguous, because as one of the one of the princely rulers,
00:31:07
Speaker
He was against Indian independence. The princely rulers as a group wanted to carry on with the system that they've got where British were a large part of India and the rest was run by them.
00:31:22
Speaker
understandably independence stripped them of power really and they were given sort of financial guarantees about their policies were not all taken away from them but politically they lost all their power in 1947. Ranji had died by then but he knew the wind was blowing towards independence by the 1920s and then obviously Gandhi's
00:31:48
Speaker
movement made it a very live issue. Ranji was against all that. So in a way, modern, independent, vibrant India does not look back on the princes particularly kindly.
00:32:03
Speaker
So there's a slightly ambiguous status to him, but he's reversed as a cricketer, and as we say, they still call their domestic tournament after him. So that's a pretty big thing really. So either his name does live on, and considering how long ago he played, that's a significant thing.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And finally, Simon, what do you think Ranji would have thought of modern cricket? My feeling is he would have assimilated to T20 cricket quite easily with his rapid scoring and his habit of inventing stroke, stroke play. But was he also an upholder of the traditions of the game?
00:32:56
Speaker
Yes, yes, he was. I mean, I don't think he was particularly, I mean, he died shortly after Bodiline, literally, you know, within weeks of the end of that tour. But he was not, I don't think he was particularly in favour, but I mean, he was, you know, he was, he was thinking, he was viewing it from a long distance. He hadn't watched it in person. So, yes, I think so. But he would have, he was a traditionalist.
00:33:22
Speaker
but he having said that as we've discussed he invented new cricket strokes and he would have you know if he was watching if he was here now watching a t20 game his answer his response would be i told you you could score around the wicket and that's now what all the best players do they're doing exactly what i did
00:33:40
Speaker
I told you that that was the way to go. I was playing T20 cricket before you got thought of it. So I think that would sort of be his attitude and that's sort of his legacy really, that he was the first guy to come up with this sort of stuff and that in a way is his greatest legacy. Never mind all the stats and the rest of it.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's the way he looked at a cricket field and decided where he could score. He was the first one to see the potential. That's a good point. And I also think he would have enjoyed the money associated with modern cricket. It would have stopped a lot of heartache for him, that's for sure. He would have paid a lot of bills, wouldn't it? It would have, yes. Well, Simon, thank you so much for joining the podcast. I hope my listeners have enjoyed it.
00:34:32
Speaker
As much I have, you know, revisiting, hearing you revisit Ranjit Singhji after all these years, I appreciate you delving into the memory bake. It's been most enjoyable, so thank you. Thank you. That's all from me. Please remember to follow or subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform. My name is Tom Ford and until next time, it's bye for now.
00:35:02
Speaker
Bye!