Shaggy Alfresco
State Captain
I was talking to an Irish friend of mine about the possibility of test cricket coming to Ireland and also countries like Kenya, the Netherlands and Canada. I told him that historically cricket spread with the white anglo settlers of the British Empire...except in the strange case of south Asia.
So my question to the cricketing prehistorians on this forum: why did cricket become the premier sport of the Indian subcontinent? Obviously this is due to the influence of the British Raj, but why did cricket take root in the Raj and not in Britain's African colonies, or South America (which Britian invested so heavily in)? Football took root in these countries but it didn't in India. Also, when? I looked through the original first-class competitions played in India and saw that it wasn't until WW1 when the local population started regularly beating Europeans (and the Zoroastrian minority, curiously enough).
So my question to the cricketing prehistorians on this forum: why did cricket become the premier sport of the Indian subcontinent? Obviously this is due to the influence of the British Raj, but why did cricket take root in the Raj and not in Britain's African colonies, or South America (which Britian invested so heavily in)? Football took root in these countries but it didn't in India. Also, when? I looked through the original first-class competitions played in India and saw that it wasn't until WW1 when the local population started regularly beating Europeans (and the Zoroastrian minority, curiously enough).