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Familiar Foes
Cricket touring teams and their
entourage just aren’t the same
any more. 1932 saw India face
Nottinghamshire, the first encounter
between the two sides.
The Maharajah was the captain of the
touring team and the Prince was vice-
captain, the latter leading the side at
Trent Bridge.
Today,Test touring teams rarely play
counties in first-class matches, the last
time India did so in Nottingham was
over 30 years ago, in 1982.
Although the Indian side of 1932
did not represent the full strength of
Indian cricket and were overwhelmed
by Nottinghamshire, over 15,000
spectators turned out to watch the
first day’s play, so the game was a
lucrative one for the county – in
fact to date, July 2, the crowd was
the largest seen at Trent Bridge that
summer.
Nottinghamshire
and India:
Familiar Foes
Nottinghamshire had Larwood and
Voce as their opening attack and
with Larwood at his peak – the great
combination only two weeks before
had bowled unchanged through both
Leicestershire’s innings (of 80 and 53
all out).
Such was the speed of Larwood’s
bowling that one Indian batsman
was struck on the forehead and
retired for stitches in the wound, but
the Nottingham paper praised the
visitors’ pluck.
‘Among some teams that regrettable
accident might have had on unsettling
effect, but at six o’clock and with
Larwood still bowling, the keenness
of the Indian batsmen was revealed
in the fact that they never once failed
to cross on the pavilion steps,’ it
commented.
The only previous occasion when an
Indian side had been toTrent Bridge
was in 1886. Cricket had been played
in India ever since the British set foot
there.To paraphrase the German
Crown Prince in 1900, ‘when a
European power arrives in a foreign
PETER WYNNE-THOMAS