As Virat Kohli’s Indian cricket team are all set to tour Australia, let us go back to 1935-36 when an Australian cricket team had first toured India for an unofficial Test series.
Frank Tarrant was a great Australian all-rounder, who brought India and Australia together in cricket.
His life story is fascinating as revealed by another India-loving Australian, Mike Coward, in his latest book Cricket’s Forgotten Pioneer – The Frank Tarrant Story. Tarrant (1880-1951) was a rare breed who should have played many Tests but did not play even one.
Born in Melbourne, he played first-class cricket for Victoria, Middlesex and for a few teams in India.
In 329 first-class matches spanning 1898 to 1937, he scored 17,952 runs at 36.41 with 33 centuries (highest score 250 not out for Middlesex v Sussex in 1914), took 1512 wickets at 17.49 capturing 5 wickets in an innings 133 times (best being 10 for 90 for Lord Wellington’s XI v Maharajah of Cooch-Behar XI in 1918-19) as a left-arm spinner and held 303 catches.
He umpired in India’s two Tests against England in Bombay and Calcutta in 1933-34.
A pioneer, he brought Australia closer to India in cricket, playing cricket in India from 1915-16 to 1936-37. He brought and managed the first Australian team to India in 1935-36 which played four unofficial Tests. He was also responsible for laying turf at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai.
To organise the tour to India, he had an ongoing fight with the Australian Board of Control for Cricket, but succeeded despite many knockbacks. The audacity of Tarrant to organise the tour to India angered the conventional Board members.
They initially rejected the proposal, but Tarrant persevered. Author of Cricket beyond the Bazaar (1990), Coward researches deeply on how that tour came through.
Tarrant was in his best form as an all-rounder in 1908 when first invited to India as a cricket coach and consultant by Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala. The friendship grew, culminating in Australia’s historic tour of India in 1935-36.
Before the Maharaja of Patiala, Tarrant had befriended the legendary Ranjitsinhji when representing Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) against London County at Crystal Palace in 1903. Tarrant never forgot the genius Ranjit showed to engineer a most improbable
victory for London County.
Bhupinder Singh was 17 when he was coached by Tarrant, who was embraced by the royal household.
As Harsha Bhogle writes in the Foreword, “…this book casts light on a very interesting period in Indian cricket; full of romance, colour and patronage…”
Coward puts forward an interesting suggestion. He agrees that Allan Border and Sunil Gavaskar have every right to the trophy which bears their names for Tests between Australia and India, “but indisputably Tarrant deserves greater recognition and a rarefied place in the game’s history.”
