India in the Imagination of South African Indian Cricket, 1910–1971

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the establishment of cricket within the diasporic Indian population in South Africa, notably in the province of Natal. Indians began settling there from 1860 and in time set up sporting, religious, cultural, educational and political organisations which were race-based because of the politics of exclusion adopted by successive white minority regimes. Indians in South Africa maintained close ties with the Motherland, most obvious in the political realm but also evident in areas such as cultural and sporting contact. Several tours forged links but India’s taking up the cause of Indian South Africans at the United Nations from 1946 led to a termination of such contact. It did not, however, prevent Indians in South Africa from following Indian and Pakistani cricket passionately.