While Bombay's Quadrangular dominated Indian cricket headlines in the 1910s, Calcutta Cricket Club — founded in 1792 and one of the oldest in the world — continued as the centre of cricket in eastern India, hosting touring sides through the war and providing a meeting point for the British and increasingly Indian elites of Bengal.
Calcutta Cricket Club had been founded in 1792, making it the oldest cricket club outside the British Isles. Eden Gardens was laid out in the 1860s.
Through the 1910s, with the British Indian Army's presence and Australian service teams passing through, CCC hosted regular touring fixtures.
Calcutta Cricket Club, based at Eden Gardens, was the social as well as cricketing hub of the British community in Calcutta. Through the 1910s it hosted matches against Australian and English service sides during the war and continued its long-running fixtures against Bengal and Up-Country teams. Indian membership of the club itself remained restricted, but Indian cricketers played increasingly regular fixtures against CCC sides as part of the wider Eden Gardens circuit. The 1910s were the period in which the Bengal Cricket Association began to take shape as a separate body — eventually becoming the Cricket Association of Bengal in 1929. The eastern Indian first-class system, smaller than Bombay's, would not produce a Test cricketer until much later, but the foundations of organised Bengali cricket are in this decade.
1792 (background): CCC founded
1910s: Wartime touring service sides play CCC
1910s: Indian club cricket grows in Bengal
1929 (post-decade): Cricket Association of Bengal formed
1910s
Wartime services matches at Eden Gardens
1910s
Indian club cricket grows in Calcutta
“Cricket in Calcutta was as much a club institution as a sporting one.”
Bengal would eventually become a Ranji Trophy power; the first Test at Eden Gardens was played in 1934.
Calcutta's quieter 1910s, in the shadow of Bombay's Quadrangular but laying the foundations of Bengal cricket.
The 1910s consolidation of CCC and Calcutta cricket is the bedrock of one of India's most cricket-mad regions.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.