Empire Cricket Booklet

RICHARD PARRY

Samsodien who hit 45. The game ended with them on 217/7 (Ariefdien 21 not out) and in an excellent position to force a win had time allowed. They also outclassed their opponents in the field, 'not only did they cover the ground very fast but their picking up and returning ... was first class'.7 4 The town succumbed to cricket fever; not only had the 'Malay' side won the Glover Cup, equivalent to the Currie Cup, on 2 April, but Kimberley's establishment won back the Currie Cup from their hated rivals, Transvaal, on 12 April in the most exciting of circumstances. 75 The commercial success of the tournament and the representative game which followed was viewed in some quarters as the result of penny pinching and sharp practice. Once again the Port Elizabeth team were unhappy. A letter from 'Port Elizabeth' to the Diamond Fields Advertiser complained about the lack of explanation regarding the share of the gate money promised by 'Mr Glover, the father of the tournament' and the inadequate payment of £20 (actual Port Elizabeth expenditure was £44) to each team. Port Elizabeth had been 'treated with Chinese shops for our provisions' whereas at the previous tournament hosted by Port Elizabeth, Kimberley had been treated 'like the English team'. 'The public will not rest ...,' said the writer, '.. . until shown that the sum of £80 was not hushed up.' 76 The Glover Cup was competed for again in Kimberley in early January 1892, but this time Cape Town proved too strong. The victorious Cape Town Union team under the presidency of Abdol Burns arrived back to a 3 000-strong reception at the Cape Town railway station.MeanwhileW.W.Read's team were touring the country. Initially Kimberley had offered to host an 'African' XI (that is, a Test match, not a match against Africans) against the tourists but reconsidered when a guarantee of £250 was requested and instead arranged a match against XXII of Griqualand West. 77 In February and again in April 1892, Kimberley Cricket Club played the Kimberley 'Malay tournament team' and in the latter the 'Malays' won by 10 wickets. But Robert Grendon's patience finally snapped in the face of the insistence of the press in stereotyping the team as 'Malays'. 'The team which played against Mr Powell's XI

apparently as a result of his runner knocking off a bail. But Kimberley, needing only 78 to win, made it with seven wickets to spare. 73 The evening was spent at a Malay Khalifa perform ance at the Glover family's club - Pirates - complete with a performance from the Pirates Band in the interval. And a banquet was held the following night at Glover's Athletic Rooms hosted by former Port Elizabeth and Cape Town residents and attended by the three team captains (Hendricks, L. Samsodien from Cape Town and K. Mallick from Port Elizabeth). Abdol Burns, the Cape Town Union president, presented the Glover Cup to Hendricks. Preparations were immediately made for a South African 'Malay' side to take on a select Kimberley XI at the Eclectic ground. The selected team was to be captained by Hendricks and made up of Grendon, Vogt, Palmer, and M. Salie from Kimberley, Ariefdien, E. Abrams, L. Samsodien and K. du Toit from Cape Town, and M. Souk and J. Adams from Port Elizabeth. The fact that two of the three teams may not have been totally representative of their regions, having omitted black and non Muslim players, means this cannot be seen as a fully representative 'non-white' team but it was as close as South Africa was to come to such a team in the nineteenth century. The Kimberley opposition was as strong as could be arranged, given that the senior side was currently in Johannesburg seeking to reclaim the Currie Cup. In the first innings, Irvine Grimmer (who had been unable to take leave from De Beers for the Currie Cup tournament) reduced the 'South African' team from 62/1 to 97 all out taking 7/39, with only Robert Grendon (30) showing any degree of mastery of his sharply turning off breaks. The opposition replied with 197/6 declared, with Ariefdien and Grendon being relatively ineffectual with the ball. Hendricks was the star performer, proving 'a titan among the minnows of the Malay trundlers' in taking 5/72 in 25 overs. The 'South African' second innings demonstrated an ability to learn from their mistakes and the attack was taken apart by Grendon who, in a 'brilliant exposition of well timed hitting, his cutting being particularly clean and hard', made 92, and L.