Bombay Quadrangular
In 1912, the Muslims of the Mohammedan Gymkhana were invited to the now famous Bombay tournament, making it a Quadrangular. The tournament was held throughout World War I, but poor weather at the end of the monsoon season rained out four of the six finals played up until 1916. In 1917, the Quadrangular was moved to November/December to avoid such problems. Another change for the 1917 tournament was the use of neutral umpires for the first time. Up to this season, a European umpire appointed by the Bombay Gymkhana had always officiated, but from now on the umpires for any match would be supplied by the non-competing teams. This was one of the first uses of neutral umpires in world cricket.
The Quadrangular became more popular than its predecessor, and for many years formed the highlight of the Bombay year. This was against the background of Gandhi's campaigns for the Indian home rule. Gandhi and his followers were critical of the Quadrangular, seeing it as a method of pacifying the natives and ensuring loyalty to British rule and its ideals of sport. Gandhi, who had himself played cricket as a schoolboy, was not against having a cricket tournament, but was opposed to having teams on the basis of religion. In 1940 he is known to have asked the "sporting public of Bombay to revise their sporting code and to erase from it communal matches."
The 1921 tournament attracted particular attention, as Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales visited Bombay during it. His arrival sparked three days of political rioting in Bombay, but did not disrupt the tournament. After the riots had ended, he attended the first day of the final, accepting cheers from a pro-European crowd, who eventually witnessed the parsis prevail over the Bombay Gymkhana .
By the 1920s, the Gymkhanas were recruiting players from all over the Indian subcontinent, making the Bombay Quadrangular the biggest and most influential cricket tournament in India. It also inspired other local competitions, including a Triangular in Lahore and Quadrangulars in Nagpur and Karachi, that led to the rapid development of cricket throughout the region. Although the Quadrangular partly quelled discrimination on racial or caste lines, the question of religion came up in 1924. The Hindu Gymkhana initially extended an invitation to P. A. Kanickam of Bangalore to play for them. Later they discovered that the player was not a Hindu, but a Christian, and withdrew their invitation. With the Europeans not accepting Indians, and the Hindus not accepting Christians, Kanickam had no way of playing in the tournament.
In 1930, Gandhi's campaign reached a climax with the Salt Satyagraha, provoking civil disobedience and the arrests of 60,000 Indians. Amidst this political turmoil, the Quadrangular tournament was cancelled. It was not held again until 1934, when the cricket-starved public enthusiastically supported its reinstatement. In 1935, the sports editor of the nationalist Bombay Chronicle, J. C. Maitra, suggested the Quadrangular be replaced with a geographic-zone-based tournament, to remove the racial and religious overtones. A newspaper correspondent argued an opposite case, for expansion into a Pentangular, with a team for Indian Christians. The public however clamoured for the traditional format and these suggestions were ignored.
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