Empire Cricket Booklet

CHAPTER TEN

The Boer Prisoners of w-ar in Ceylon and the 'Great and Grand Old Manly Game' of Cricket

W. G. SCHULZE

its famous match against a Colombo Colts XI on 5 and 6 July 1901, a game referred to in a number of publications over the past century. 3 There are many articles and books by players, ad ministrators and commentators celebrating the achievements of white Englishmen from the earliest years of South African cricket. These avowed his tories of the game, which are now seen as partial, in both senses of the word, begin with Maurice Luckin's History ofSouth African Cricket in 1915. Only relatively recently has the neglected field of black cricket begun to receive the attention it has long merited, in the work of writers such as Odendaal, Allie, Khota, Desai, Padayachee, Reddy and Vahed. 4 All have shown that blacks also took to the game. Ironically perhaps, given their years of political dominance for much of the twentieth century, the one neglected area of cricket history lies in the Afrikaner perspective. Common wisdom is that until the 1960s Afrikaners played rugby and shunned crick et. But as this chapter shows, Afrikaners embraced this quintessentially English game from the earliest years, though in far fewer numbers than those who favoured rugby. Before the war of 1899-1902, English and Afrikaans-speaking cricketers played together; during the war they were generally on different sides, but once the war was over they were soon back together as players and administrators.

CRICKET SONG

What Africanders shall dare Any pastime to compare With the great and grand old manly game we love, What sight so sweet to view As a wicket hard and true And the fieldsman kept for ever on the move.

Chorus Run, run, run the balls a rolling

Scarcely to the boundary she'll go. And the throwing's getting wild And the wicket keepers riled So we'll try to steal another for the throw. 1

Is this a typical example of Victorian verse in which the virtues of cricket are sung, albeit naively? Were it not for the reference to 'Africanders' (sic) in the opening line, one could be forgiven for thinking that it was sung by schoolboys at a public school in England during the late nineteenth century. The truth is that it was sung by the 70-odd members of the Boer prisoner of war Cricket Club in the Diyatalawa camp in Ceylon (Sri Lanka since 1972) during their incarceration there between August 1900 and June 1902. 2 This cricket club is perhaps best known for