TNCA LEAGUE: FROM THEN TO NOW

The first league championship of Madras was instituted by the Indian Cricket Federation or ICF.  It can be seen that MRC competed in the league from day one.

The teams to participate in the first season were:
Triplicane Cricket Club
Madras Emmanuel Club
Mylapore Recreation Club
Minerva Cricket Club
Chepauk United Club
Madras Eastern Club
Nowroji-Gokhale Union
Mambalam Cricket Club
Madras Aryan Club
Progressive Union
City Central League
Mars Union
Trades Staff Club
Royapettah Students Club
Perambur Recreation Club
Corporation Sports Club
Post and RMS Recreation Club
B&C Mills Athletic Association.

It can be seen from above that MRC and TCC were up and playing in the Madras league as early as 1932, but archival material from The Hindu (dated 13 April 1949) reveals that MRC came into being even earlier—in April 1924, and in fact, celebrated its silver jubilee on the 12th of that month.  Here is the report.

JUBILEE OF MYLAPORE RECREATION CLUB
April 13, 1959
The Silver Jubilee of the Mylapore Recreation Club, was celebrated last evening at "The Grove" , Teynampét. There was a dinner party. In a short speech after dinner,
Mr. C. R. Pattabhiraman described the history of the club, and some of its well known players. The club, he said, had a good record in football. hockey and cricket. Especially in cricket they 'had always been a team of "giant killers". But what was more important than winning trophies, they had cultivated fine friendships. They were proud that their cricket captain Mr G. Parthasarathi, was going to England on an important job. Mr. Parthasarathi, he said, was a strong and silent man and they felt sure that he would cover himself with glory in his new appointment. He wished him godspeed and good luck.

Sir K. P. Lakshmana Rao thanked the members and guests for responding to the invitation. He wished Mr. G. Parthasarathi good luck in his new appointment. Members of the club presented a silver cigarette case as a souvenir to Mr. Parthasarathi.

Earlier, the gathering observed two minutes' silence in memory of the late Messrs. Baliah and Vasu Naidu.

Many of the teams that competed in that first season of the league are still playing, under the same or slightly modified names.

The Madras Cricket Club had hitherto controlled all domestic cricket, but after the formation of the league, ICF and MCC often assumed adversarial positions and even conducted important matches independently on the same days.

MADRAS CRICKET ASSOCIATION
The two rival bodies, however, soon joined hands to form the Madras Cricket Association. All 45 city clubs became members of the MCA, which now took over the conduct of the league. An umpires’ panel was soon constituted from successful candidates in written and oral tests, followed by a medical examination. MCA took on the responsibility of arranging grounds and fixtures in a systematic manner for the first time in the city. The practice of supplying cricket balls at a subsidised price, still prevalent in the State, also began around this time.

By 1933-1934, a second division was added to the League and in the very next season, a third division. The Bishop Waller Shield for the second division (donated by S. Kannan) and the Dr. P. Subbaroyan Shield for the third division were now added to the Rajah of Palayampatti Shield for the First Division.

A fourth division was added in the 1939-40 season, the C.R. Pattabhiraman Shield for the fourth division being donated by Pattabhiraman, a Vice-President of the Madras Cricket Association, a successful advocate and a founder of Mylapore Recreation Club, one of the strongest teams of the period.

World War II interrupted the league, causing a break during 1942-1944, but a few teams like the MCC, MUC, University Occasionals and Jolly Cricketers played unofficial matches on their grounds, and cricket activity continued in the city.  When the League was revived in 1944-1945, only ten first division teams took part, but the scenario improved every subsequent year. By 1948-1949, 81 teams were taking part in the various divisions of the league, now structured into three divisions, with two zones A and B in the First Division, and three zones (A, B and C) each in the second and third divisions.

By a new set of rules in 1953-54, the MCA restricted the total number of teams to twelve in each zone of each division.  The pattern continues to the present, except for a change in nomenclature introduced in the 1967-68 season. 

The First Division ‘A’ Zone became the first division under the new arrangement, and I ‘B’ became the second division, I ‘C’ was now the third division, the original II division becoming the fourth and so on. There were now five divisions, with subdivisions in the third, fourth and fifth divisions, and 132 teams competing. (Today, the league has 149 teams in six divisions (subdivided as below:
DIVISION     ZONES                                                            TEAMS
FIRST                                                                                             12
SECOND                                                                                       12
THIRD            A (10)    B (10)                                                      20
FOURTH        A (10)    B (10)    C (10)    D (10)                         40
FIFTH             A (10)    B (10)    C (10)    D (10) E (10)              50   
SIXTH            A (8)       B (7)                                                        15

TOTAL                                                                                        149

The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association – by which name the MCA was renamed in 1969 – conducts, arguably, the best cricket league in India. It must be the only league below inter-State level featuring three-day matches.

The three-day league match was brought into vogue for the League’s first division in the new millennium. (In the lower divisions, the matches are still of one-day duration, but played on a 50-over basis.) First division matches were played over a day-and-a-half in the 1970s and over two days in the 1980s. For the first forty years of its existence, the League was conducted on a one-day match basis without limitation of overs, so that sides batting first were obliged to effect declarations in order to produce results. After some tweaking of the length of the matches in between, three day matches have now been reintroduced for the first division.

Over the decades, league cricket has come to depend on corporate patronage, thanks to the galloping financial and infrastructure demands of the game. Tamil Nadu has been fortunate in that a number of companies show a keen interest in the game, and have invested substantially in talent promotion and infrastructure development, something not the case in other States.

On the negative side, it is obvious that increasing professionalism and corporatisation of the game have rung the death knell of genuine club cricket kept alive in the past by the sheer passion of the cricket tragics who supported the game, often at personal expense and loss.

Some of these sponsors have established premier coaching establishments, and many facilitate the State’s players’ participation in all-India level tournaments and even encourage them to play and train abroad.  The media too has played a key role in the encouragement of cricket in the State, though its coverage of the game is increasingly confined to international cricket.

The game had for a long time been an elitist pursuit, learned from the British by the landed gentry and educated upper crust, before it gradually percolated to the middle class. Buchi Babu Nayudu, a Westernised Oriental Gentleman well versed in the ways of the ruling British at the turn of the century, was the first native to assemble an Indian eleven which would eventually become capable of beating the 'European' at his own game. Soon the game spread far and wide in Madras, with caste Hindus and Anglo-Indians the most prominent cricketers of the city.

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