Foundation Cricket Club at forty
Perhaps the most exhilarating thing about having a newspaper column at one’s disposal is the freedom that it gives one to interrogate a broad spectrum of subjects in full public
Perhaps the most exhilarating thing about having a newspaper column at one's disposal is the freedom that it gives one to interrogate a broad spectrum of subjects in full public gaze. In these days of almost unfettered access to the public however, the influence wielded by newspaper columnists is somewhat limited as newspaper columns are in competition, with myriad social media practitioners some of whom can boast of having a reach which is greater than that of a typical newspaper. Still, there is a thrill in having the freedom to choose a subject of discussion with an unco-opted audience within the global reach of the internet, especially when the subject is cricket.
This week I have decided to return to one of my pet subjects; the wonderful game of cricket, beloved of considerably more than one billion people all over the world but especially on the vast Indian sub-continent. Followed as well in England and her far flung diaspora in Australia, New Zealand and Southern Africa. Believe it or not, this makes it the second most popular game in the world after football. At this time however, the epicentre of the game in every sense is in India where there are close to a billion crickét players and supporters, some of them of the fanatic kind. Cricket is growing hand in hand with the Indian economy and this means that there is a great deal of Indian derived money in world cricket at this time.
As can be imagined, the game was once controlled in its entirety from London, the seat of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The earliest body of laws governing the game was codified and sent round the world as it then was in 1744, more than a century before the codification of the rules governing football. But this bit of information hardly scratches the surface as the game has been played in one form or the other since around 1300. Even then, there is some evidence which suggests that the origin of the game could be earlier than this.
Cricket in its earliest form was reportedly first played by boys around clearings in the forests which existed in the south of England. But adults soon gatecrashed the proceedings when it was found that the game lent itself to betting and was taken over by adult gamblers. Ironically, a game which for most of its existence has been associated with moral rectitude would not, in all probability, have existed without gamblers and their propensity for pocketing other people's money. Maybe this is why it is not surprising that the game is still fighting a running battle with gamblers, disproportionately of Indian origin, who are the moral descendants of those wily Englishmen who pulled cricket out of the playful grip of children and set it on the path of global domination.
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With so many cricket addicts all round the world, it is strange that cricket remains a game played in elite settings, mainly by people within those settings and even the exceptions to this rule only go on to prove it. Without the expensive fee paying English boy schools which adopted the game, it is quite possible that it would not have developed on the lines which it adopted in the early days of its existence. I for one was introduced to the game within the frankly elitist environment of Igbobi College in the early sixties and that experience is mirrored by virtually every Nigerian cricketer of my generation and beyond. There is perhaps no other single activity that has matched the ability of cricket to recruit elites. Even on the Indian sub-continent where virtually every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be a cricket fan, access to the upper reaches of the game is still restricted to those with a markedly elitist background. Cricket is ruled by a quiet passion which is hemmed in by a set of laws which governs every aspect of the game in a way that the rules which govern every other game does not or maybe, cannot do. To begin with, Cricket is the only game that is governed by laws, not rules and these laws are being continuously revised, the current and seventh edition having been published in 2017. To be a cricketer therefore is to belong to a group of people whose activities are subject to a more or less universal set of laws outside the reach of any government. Cricket was part of the British colonial establishment for many years but it has now been taken over by the formerly colonized and has taken over the colouration of a beautiful rainbow. It has outgrown the boundaries of its English origins, if only because without the presence of the sun overhead, cricket will simply not swing!
Cricket has been played in Nigeria for over a century even if for all that time it has refused to be grafted onto the Nigerian tree. For a very long time, the game did not venture out of the confines of government institutions and its presence within the missionary space that was Igbobi College of my time can only be explained by the fact that the missionary sponsors of Igbobi College were simply hell bent on building an elite institution. And it was decided at the time that the game of cricket was indispensable to the achievement of that laudable objective. Unfortunately, there was a truly unfortunate period of her history when the school was violated by government intervention, one of the results of which led to the sad erasure of a cricket culture. The same forces which erased cricket from Igbobi College have stymied the growth of cricket in Nigeria thereby depriving the country of the opportunity of being a cricketing power at par with India, Pakistan and the West Indies. The mention of the West Indies in this list is deliberate as the people who inhabit those Caribbean islands are mainly diasporan Nigerians. It boggles the mind to imagine what 200 million Nigerian cricket enthusiasts would accomplish in a world which for many years was in the pocket of 10 million West Indians.
Today, there are not many cricket playing institutions in Nigeria but the game is far from dead. The news going round concerning cricket is cautiously encouraging with the Nigerian Cricket Association bringing the gospel of the game to many parts of Nigeria where cricket was unknown only a few years ago. It is heart warming to note that our young ladies are making substantial waves in international cricket. It seems therefore that it is only a matter of time before our ladies cricket team will be counted among the top cricket teams in the world.
When cricket went into sad decline in our secondary schools, the game was kept alive by clubs mainly in Lagos and Kaduna. The leading clubs in Lagos in the sixties were LACC and Dyaks both of them domiciled at the Racecourse, the huge expanse of greenery at Onikan famous also for horse racing on weekends. That venue was however concreted over, acquired the name Tafawa Balewa Square and filled with shops. Cricket was pushed out into the wilderness and more or less, became an orphan. It was under such inauspicious circumstances that the Foundation Cricket Club was formed. Forty years ago, a group of young men came together to form what has turned out to be the saving grace of Nigerian Cricket. The fire of cricket was barely flickering at the time but together with Howzat, various executives of the Nigerian Cricket Federation, NNPC (sponsors of the inter-state cricket league), NUGA games within a few universities, they managed to prevent the cricket flame from dying out completely. The aim now must be to place Nigeria firmly on the global cricket map. There are signs that we have made a spirited recovery from the ills which assailed Nigerian cricket in those dark days of existential struggles. But, we certainly are not yet out of the woods. For us to do this, cricket must return to our secondary schools, starting with all the Federal Government Secondary Schools as well as Legacy Schools such as Igbobi College where all those many years ago, I was introduced to cricket, lovely cricket which nurtured me in many precious ways.
The Foundation Cricket Club has over the last forty years played a big role in first, keeping the cricket flame alive in Nigeria and then attracting followers into the fold. Long may the club continue to lead the way to cricket paradise in Nigeria.
