Cricket in India — The Bombay Gymkhana and the Parsi Challenge, 1850s

India's cricket history runs parallel to British colonialism. The game spread first within the garrison, then to the Eurasian and Parsi communities, and finally to the Indian communities at large — a process largely complete by the end of the nineteenth century.

The British had played cricket in Bombay since at least the 1720s — the earliest records of cricket in India date from 1721. By the 1850s the game was well established in the garrison and civil service, played at the Bombay Gymkhana (founded 1875 but with predecessor grounds) and at the Esplanade Maidan. The Parsi community, Zoroastrian traders and merchants of Persian origin who occupied a privileged position in Bombay's commercial life, had established their own cricket club in 1848 and were producing players of genuine quality by the early 1850s. Matches between the Parsi CC and the European sides attracted large crowds and the Parsi cricketers — who learned the game from watching British play and then taught it themselves — were the forerunners of the intercommunal cricket that would eventually produce the Bombay Quadrangular tournament in the 1890s. Cricket also spread to Calcutta and Madras through British army and civil service patronage in the 1850s; by 1860 there were organised clubs in all three presidency cities.