Empire Cricket Booklet

•

BRUCE MURRAY

as a potential rival. In 1907, indeed, he prompted SACA to prohibit S. J. Snooke and R. 0. Schwarz from missing the last few games of South Africa's 1907 tour of England in order to join an MCC tour of North America. 85 In a self-serving way, perhaps, for Bailey cricket was also essentially 'the Empire game', his claiming that 'Imperial cricket ... added to the union of hearts' and 'strengthened the bonds of Empire'. 86 The ICC, when it was reconstituted in 1926 to include representatives of the West Indies,

India and New Zealand, encapsulated Bailey's notion of Test cricket when it re-defined Tests as 'matches played between sides duly selected by recognised governing bodies of cricket representing countries within the Empire'. 87 Ironically, it was this imperial definition that later came to haunt SACA, resulting in South Africa's automatic exclusion from the Imperial Cricket Conference when South Africa departed the Commonwealth in 1961 on becoming a republic.

Punch's verdict on the triangular tournament in 1912

THE TRI.A.NGULAR l! 1 ARCE. 8CBNB-4 bla&tod pit,/,. Cuonua. "WHEN SHALL WE tHRP.E MEET AGAIN IN THUNDER, LIGHTNING OR IN RAIN 1''