“This match was commenced on the Chepauk ground yesterday morning. The Madras Captain won this toss and elected to send in his team. The first few wickets fell rapidly but a good stand was effected by Mr GG Arbuthnot and Mr Walter Morgan, who with those that followed, managed to pull the total up to 96 before the ninth wicket fell (one being absent). Bangalore then went in. The first few men played well, and rapidly ran the score up to the Madras total, but the “tail” went to pieces, and the last wicket fell one run only ahead of Madras.
The match will be resumed tomorrow at 11.30 am sharp. At 4 pm the Volunteer Band will commence playing and the Committee of the Club informs us that the Pavilion (upstairs) will be thrown open for the use of the ladies.”
That one report, dating to 1875 has so many threads to offer to a historian. GG Arbuthnot was the last of the clan to be in Madras. He rose to head his family’s eponymous business house, became the Chairman of the Madras Chamber of Commerce, the President of the Madras Club and was knighted but his career here ended in ignominy. Speculations of all kinds led to his firm crashing in 1906, carrying with it thousands of investors, including Sir Arthur Lawley, Governor of Madras and President of the MCC, who had to declare insolvency. Sir George G Arbuthnot was sentenced to imprisonment for two years, after serving which he departed for England. With that ended the Arbuthnot connection with Madras and also of course the MCC.
Apart from Bangalore, Madras met teams from ‘mofussil’ areas such as the Kolar Gold Fields, Trichinopoly, and the plantation districts. The first inter-state match, perhaps even India’s ‘first first-class game’ was against the Calcutta Cricket Club in 1864. H Linton ‘Head Assistant Collector, Godavari District’, was the first captain of the MCC on this wider stage of representative cricket. The players had names like Hutchins, Brandt and Breeks; some were Oxford Blues, and they held posts like Assistant Head Collector from Cuddapah, or Judge from ‘Cumbaconum’, or the Agent from Ganjam. Some interesting details of this first inter-Presidency match can be had from the memoirs of Sir Philip Hutchins, who was then Private Secretary to the Governor Sir William Denison. The idea of such a match had come from JW Breeks, later to be immortalised with a school in his name at Ootacamund. Lady Denison was going to Calcutta by steamer to join her husband who was then officiating as Governor General and it was decided that the cricket team would travel with her and other ladies, taking in H Linton and Francis (afterwards Justice) Brandt at Machilipatnam. However, when the women learnt that a battery of artillery, with gunpowder in the baggage was also to board the steamer, they refused to travel and so the cricket team had the boat to itself. Putting a team together was not easy (it never would be at the MCC), for according to Hutchins, “at the last moment, Plumer, our best batsman and a lob bowler, refused to go. At my wits’ end I had to wire to several other men to take his place. I remember I had to use my Private Secretary’s authority to get messages through at Christmas but in the end we had to complete the team as best as we could.” The Plumer referred to was Charles George, who was in the civil service. He had made his debut in first class cricket playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1860.
They reached early in January to find the Calcutta team in a state of unpreparedness and when the match was held, “it ended decidedly in our favour for in each innings we led by a substantial number of runs. It is worth noting that while all our eleven were Government servants, civil or military, the majority of the Calcutta team belonged to what used to be known as the ‘interloping community’.” By that Hutchins meant the entrepreneurs and boxwallahs, who were always considered inferior to those in the establishment. And though he may not have liked it, the MCC too eventually saw increasing membership from the ranks of those in commerce.
The powers-that-be in Madras were delighted at the outcome of the match for as Hutchins noted, some of them had been away from their desks for quite a while and yet nobody appeared to take note. “One was Judge at my old Court at Vellore. His Court must have been without a Judge for over a fortnight, but neither Government nor the High Court raised any objection. Doubtless they were all pleased at our winning the match.”
Extracted from the book 175, Not Out! 175 years of the Madras Cricket Club.