Beginnings
The entire history of cricket in India and the sub-continent as a whole is based on the existence and development of the British Raj via the East India Company.
On 31 December 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a Royal Charter to the East India Company, often colloquially referred to as "John Company". It was initially a joint-stock company that sought trading privileges in India and the East Indies, but the Royal Charter effectively gave it a 21 year monopoly on all trade in the region. In time, the East India Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one which virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, until its dissolution in 1858 following the Indian Mutiny. The East India Company was the means by which cricket was introduced into India.
In 1639, the Company effectively founded the city of Madras, and in 1661 acquired Portuguese territory on the west coast of India that included Bombay. In 1690, an Anglo-Moghul treaty allowed English merchants to establish a trading settlement on the Hooghly River, which became Calcutta. All of these places became major cricket centres as the popularity of the game grew among the native population.
Read more about this topic: History Of Cricket In India To 1918
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)