Empire Cricket Booklet

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R.M. POORE

titles - the 'Ganeshkhind Giant' or 'Umslopogaas' (which would have meant something at the time; C. B. Fry used the name of Rider Haggard's brave Zulu hero) - all add up to a picture of an imposing figure. Looking back, Stoddart suggests that when 'he returned to South Africa on service, he was the imperial epitome of the sportsman as moral exemplar'. 51 Poore was a genuine 'imperial' sporting hero, his reputation created initially by his achievements in the empire, rather than at home in England. He arrived in southern Africa in 1895 with a name made in Indian cricket, and landed in England three years

later with a reputation for high scoring, which was cemented by further achievements in southern Africa. These had been picked up in English magazines and newspapers in 1898, just as his arrival in Bulawayo in 1897, for example, was reported with excitement in the local papers. He developed and refined his batting style on hard Indian and South African wickets. He is hardly remembered today, yet as this chapter has shown, he was one of the great Victorian sportsmen who played a crucial role not only in the development of cricket in South Africa, but also the broader events taking place at the time.