Empire Cricket Booklet

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BRUCE MURRAY

The visit of the South African team to England this year was productive of interesting cricket and was so far satisfactory that the association is very anxious to promote a triangular or Imperial cricket contest between representative teams from England, Australia, and South Africa. I am aware that in promoting a contest of this kind there are many difficulties to overcome, but I am confident that if your committee could see its way to open negotiations on the subject these would not be found insuperable. On the other hand, there are, it seems to me, many advantages likely to come from such a contest. In the first place, inter-rivalry within the Empire cannot but fail to draw together in closer friendly interest all those many thousands of our kinsmen who regard cricket as their national sport, while, secondly, it would probably give a direct stimulus to amateurism. I would venture to suggest that the first step would be to form an Imperial cricket board to facilitate the necessary rules and regulations. I would also like to put forward the desirability of playing the first Imperial contest in England, or, in the event of insurmountable difficulties arising, in South Africa; further that the contest should be held at no distant date. I understand that the Australians have accepted an invitation to tour England in 1909, and it would seem that the most fitting arrangement would be to invite the South Africans to England at the same time. A copy of the letter was sent to the president of the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket. To promote the scheme among the MCC and the counties in his absence, Bailey enlisted the support of C. B. Fry, then of Sussex and who in the event was to captain England in the triangular tournament in 1912, and Hampshire's Captain E. G. Wynyard, who assisted the secretariat at Lord's during the season. Bailey employed the latter to act as his special envoy in England for a retainer of £100.

In the tour of England that followed, the South Afri cans, wearing for thefirst timetheSpringbok emblem on their blazers and caps, performed creditably before losing the hard-fought three-match Test series 1-0 and winning 21 of their remaining games. What captured the imagination of the English public was the guile and skill of the googly bowlers, who during the tour took 376 first-class wickets between them. 'Not since the earlier Australian elevens,' 'Plum' Warner recalled, 'have any bowlers been more talked about . . . People flocked to see them, their novel methods affording the greatest interest.' 61 Bailey and the ICC With South African cricket having finally made its mark on the international scene, Bailey seized the psychological moment to capitalise on its new aura. He sought to assert and entrench an equality of status for South Africa alongside the traditional Test rivals, England and Australia, by proposing the creation of an imperial triumvirate of Test-playing countries, England, Australia and South Africa, or ganised under a new authority, an 'Imperial Board of Cricket Control', with its headquarters in London. The new board's first task would be to oversee an 'Imperial Triangular Tournament' in England in 1909. In the vision Bailey propagated, not only would such a tournament be good for the game by bringing together the 33 'greatest of living cricketers' in the world, but it would also strengthen imperial ties in that it would 'bind the Mother Country and two of the larger dependencies closer together'. 62 From a South African standpoint, Bailey urged, it was important that the tournament be held earlier rather than later, 'before Schwarz, Vogler, Faulkner, White and others have passed their prime'. 63 Bailey, after canvassing opinion during the tour, first put forward his formal proposal for a triangular tournament in a letter to F. E. Lacey, the MCC secretary, on 30 November 1907, on the eve of his return from England to South Africa: 64

Dear Mr Lacey,

As you are aware, I have for some years past been intimately connected with South African cricket and the work of the South African Cricket Association.