Cricket developed differently in each part of the colonial empire. In northern Africa, for example, cricket very quickly grew to be not only a sport of British expatriates and civil servants, but also was picked up by the African inhabitants, as well, who soon began playing matches amongst themselves.¹ In eastern and southern Africa, however, cricket remained overwhelmingly a settler’s game, with strict rules as to who could and could not play, according to the colour bar.² In South Africa, for example, as early as the late 1800s, a nationally renowned cricket player, T. Hendricks, would be disallowed from participating in international tours, because he was classified as "coloured," as opposed to white.³

In India, according to Bowen, Lord Harris, the Governor of the Bombay Presidency from 1890-1893, "adopted on the cricket field the attitude that all cricketers are equal, regardless of colour."⁴ The Parsi team of Bombay by the early 1890s was "now fully equal to the best that the Europeans in India could field."⁵

Benny Green, in A History of Cricket, writes that "Harris had become convinced that cricket offered a short cut to the civilising of the locals, and had convinced himself that it was the Parsees, with their mercantile tendencies and European pretensions, who were the most likely converts to a cricketing way of life."⁶

Cricket, then, was hoped to impart upon those who played it at least some of the British (that is, "civilised") virtues that the game was believed to embody. Perhaps this goes some way to explain why cricket was initially withheld from the indigenous populations in other parts of the world, like South Africa and then Rhodesia, where the local populations were often perceived as both a threat as well as an invaluable labour force that rested on a superior-inferior racial stratification -- to "civilise" the populations through cricket would be to bring the local people dangerously close to equality.

And what if, by chance, an indigenous team were to beat an English team? The results, undoubtedly, would be scandalous. Even in India, where, somewhat surprisingly, English teams did play against Indian teams, it was not without controversy from both the English and the Indians. Some Indian newspapers were disturbed by the idea that "a cricket field was a suitable place to ignore religious, moral and social practices evolved over the centuries."7

There was a certain degree of condescension from the British side, as well, towards their Indian opponents. This image, taken from Benny Green's A History of Cricket, shows the Englishmen watching impatiently as an Indian player wraps his hair for his turban. In the corner crouches a stereotypical Indian man, watching the scene.⁸