Empire Cricket Booklet

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GOOLAM VAHED AND VISHNU PADAYACHEE

'free' Indians, as those who had completed their indentures were known, grew fruit and vegetables for the local market on land rented or purchased from absentee landlords, while small numbers worked as clerks, cooks, domestic and laundry workers, fishermen and tailors. Whites desired the outright coercion of Indians and became hostile to migration as Indians challenged their dominance of the local trade. Their anxiety increased as the numbers of Indians reached parity with whites in Natal. By 1894, there were 46 000 Indians and 45 000 whites. 5 After achieving self-government from Britain in 1893, Natal whites used their political clout to subjugate local Indians. Regulations relating to town planning, public health, trade arrangements and other public issues were cast along increasingly racial lines. 6 The Natal government attempted to force Indians to re indenture or return to India once their indentures ended. The Indian Immigration Law of 1895 compelled Indian adults to pay an annual tax of £3; Act 8 of 1896 imposed franchise restrictions; and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1897 gave the state power to control new Indian entry. Most Indians lived in Durban, a town of approxi mately 13 000 acres in 1910. It was then chiefly a port and commercial centre.7 As late as 1914, the Umgeni Sugar Company was planting cane less than two miles north of the town centre. 8 A fledgling industrial sector comprised mainly of metals and engineering firms that manufactured wagons and repaired imported machinery on the sugar estates, coal mines and in the shipping trade. 9 The chief exports were coal, wool, hides, wattle bark, maize and whale oil.1° The Natal economy relied greatly on railway traffic from the Transvaal, the overberg trade, customs duties and railway receipts accounting for 69 per cent of revenue in 1908-1909.11 Durban's economic take off was given momentum by the First World War, when local industries, given a fillip by restrictions on overseas trade and high freight costs, 'enjoyed a high increase in their businesses'. 12 Demand for soap, matches, spirits, beer and explosives boosted industrial development, while an oil refinery, flour mill and hardening works were started in 1915. 13 Outside of Durban, sugar remained dominant along the coastal areas, while coal mining predominated in the interior.

Thus while imperialism sought economic and political control, power over the cultural environment - education, religion, language, music, leisure - was also central, better to control the 'native's' outlook and definition of self. For Amilcar Cabral, colonial rule could not 'be sustained except by the permanent and organised repression of the cultural life of the people in question'. 4 Re-education of the native went hand-in-hand with brute force. Thus, for example, Hilaire Belloc rejoiced, 'thank God that we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not'. Not surprisingly, such re-education extended to the game of cricket in many parts of the empire. Cricket was introduced in all British colonies to trans mit supposedly quintessential English values like bravery, sportsmanship and discipline. 'Supposedly', because the infamous Bodylineseries of the early 1930s, in which the English team adopted intimidatory tactics to counter the mastery of the great Australian batsman Donald Bradman, calls into question whether notions of sportsmanship and'fairplay' ever really underpinned British character. Notwithstanding this, colonial 'sub jects' adopted the game with much enthusiasm. In South Africa, cricket development had a peculiar logic, in some ways coinciding with, in other ways at odds with, what was occurring elsewhere in the empire. Here, cricket was mainly played by and developed for white settlers and British colonial administrators. The indigenous population was not encouraged to take it up. Africans fulfilled a functional, labour-providing status in the colonial hierarchy. The British expected them to work in the mines and plantations, and it would appear that for the British it would have been senseless and also somewhat hypocritical to inculcate their'civilised' values among Africans while imposing a superior-inferior racial stratification. For this reason, too, they did not actively encourage cricket among Natal's newly arriving Indian migrants. This study considers the relationship between cricket, empire and lndianness in (what was then) the colony of Natal.

Arrival and Settlement

The arrival of indentured labour had significant consequences. Contrary to the expectations of gov ernment, around 60 per cent of migrants remained in the colony after their contracts had expired. Most