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Hindustan Times
15-07-2025
- Sport
- Hindustan Times
Bengaluru's long history of backing the right horse
This past Sunday, July 13, the most glittering race of the 105-year-old Bangalore Turf Club's summer season, the Zavaray S Poonawalla Bangalore Summer Derby, was won by the favourite, Fynbos, who, with this win, claimed her fourth championship. The excitement that continues to surround the racing season is an ode to the city's longstanding equestrian culture, lovingly stewarded by its rulers and administrators through the ages. If Tipu Sultan is credited with founding the Kunigal Stud Farm, the oldest continuously operated stud farm in India, the Mysore Maharajas, like several British Residents and Commissioners of Mysore, were passionate horsemen. More recently, homegrown business baron Vijay Mallya revitalised horse racing in the city, after his company, United Racing & Bloodstock Breeders Ltd, won the bid for the lease of the Kunigal Stud Farm for 30 years (1992-2022). This Sunday, the Zavaray S Poonawalla Bangalore Summer Derby, was won by the favourite, Fynbos, who, with this win, claimed her fourth championship (HT photo) Coincidentally, yesterday, July 14, was the 231st birthday of one such horse-loving Mysore royal, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar; it was during his reign that the very first recorded horse race in Bangalore was run, on October 14, 1811. Unfortunately for Mummadi, his significant contributions to the fashioning of Mysore into a culturally vibrant, educationally forward, liberal-thinking, inclusive, and yes, horse-loving space, the very attributes that define Bangalore today, are not celebrated enough. For although his reign lasted close to seven decades (1799-1868), it fell to Mummadi's fate that he would only be the titular ruler for 37 of those years. Mummadi was only five when Tipu Sultan was killed in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in May 1799, ending the 40-year-long reign of Hyder Ali and Tipu. Throughout this period, Mummadi's adoptive grandmother, the Chanakya-esque Maharani Lakshmi Ammanni Devi, had kept the possibility of a Wadiyar scion reclaiming the Mysore throne alive, parleying with the British and to secure this for her family. On June 30, less than two months after Tipu's death, her dream was realized when Mummadi was crowned king. In January 1811, the British Resident in the Mysore court, Arthur Henry Cole (after whom Bangalore's Cole's Road and Cole's Park are named), transferred the reins of state to 16-year-old Mummadi. It was with Cole that Mummadi came to the race course in Bangalore, then located in Domlur, for the city's first-recorded racing fixture. In 1824, Aga Aly Asker, youngest of three brothers from a horse-breeding family of Shiraz in Persia, arrived with his horses in Bangalore Cantonment, having heard that there was brisk business to be done here. To Aly Asker's delight, not only was he able to garner British custom, he also went on to become equestrian advisor, and good friend, to the deposed Maharaja. By this time, however, the inexperienced Mummadi, not quite cut out for the cloak-and-dagger world of politics, was battling internal rebellions and uprisings at every turn. In 1831, his government was dismissed, and Mysore came under the direct control of the British; it would not return to the Wadiyars until 1881, 13 years after Mummadi's passing. Perhaps relieved that he no longer had to deal with the exigencies of administering a kingdom, Mummadi proceeded to write, support artists and musicians, play board games, solve thorny never-solved chess puzzles, and enjoy his horses. In 1834, an East India company officer called Mark Cubbon took over as Chief Commissioner of Mysore. He was fair-minded, had great respect for the local language and customs, and loved horses to distraction with a passion. Slowly but surely, he won the trust of both the king his government had dismissed, and the Persian horse-whisperer. That friendship, and others like it, would set the tone for the city to come – one in which provenance, political positions, and cultural differences would be set aside in the joy of a shared passion and a common humanity. Simple horse sense, what? (Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
Hindustan Times
03-06-2025
- Sport
- Hindustan Times
A tryst with destiny
Tonight, as they have done on three other memorable, heartbreaking occasions over the past 18 years, Royal Challengers Bangalore will take the stage in an IPL final. For an incredible fourth time, Virat Kohli, who has worn the RCB colours since its founding, will walk into a capacity stadium filled with the most loyal fans in the world, whose fierce, steadfast belief – Ee sala Cup namde! – has lit up every IPL season since 2008, to the familiar, ear-splitting chant – Aar-Cee-Bee! Aar-Cee-Bee! This time, RCB's opponents are the Punjab Kings. It is apposite that the names of both teams reference the monarchy, for rulers of the regions these teams represent have had a big part to play in the birth and growth of cricket in our neck of the woods. The first mention of cricket in the subcontinent comes from the 1737 work 'A Compendious History of the Indian Wars with an Account of the Rise, Progress, Strength and Forces of Angria the Pyrate' (a reference to the dreaded Maratha Navy admiral, Kanhoji Angre) by the East India Company midshipman Clement Downing. As the ship lay in port in Cambay in 1721, enjoying a brief respite between battles with Angria, writes Downing, 'we every day diverted ourselves with playing at cricket, and other exercises…' Cricket officially began, however, with the establishment, in 1792, of the Calcutta Cricket Club, only five years after the founding of the venerable Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The next cricket club in India came up much closer home – after the fall of Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War of 1799, Col Arthur Wellesley (later the First Duke of Wellington), is believed to have set it up in Seringapatam (Srirangapatna)! The man who led the successful British campaign in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was General George Harris, 1st Baron Harris. He himself had nothing to do with cricket, but his son, the 2nd Baron Harris, who had fought, as a 16-year-old, in the same war, provided the financial backing for the establishment, in 1835, of the Old County Ground in Kent, home of the West Malling Cricket Club; in his 1836 novel, The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens featured the ground as the setting for a fictional cricket match. It was the 2nd Baron's grandson, Lord Harris, first-class cricketer and captain of the English cricket team, who is credited with having the greatest impact in laying the foundations for the spread of the gentleman's game in India, during his tenure as Governor of Bombay between 1890 and 1895. In 1909, as a trustee of the MCC, he helped set up the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) as cricket's primary governing body; in 1926, he persuaded the ICC to accept the British colonies of the West Indies, New Zealand and India as members. And where does Punjab come into this? It was the flamboyant ruler of Patiala, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh (remember him from Diljit Dosanjh's Met Gala costume?), who was instrumental in the setting up of the BCCI in 1928. He also donated the Ranji Trophy (named after KS Ranjitsinhji, an Indian prince who played for England and was considered the greatest batsman of the age) to kick off our own first-class inter-state annual cricket tournament in 1934. In 1934, the Mysore Cricket Club (estd 1933, now the Karnataka State Cricket Association) became affiliated to the BCCI, and played its first Ranji Trophy Match against Madras State (Mysore lost). The then Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, was not involved with his homegrown cricket club, but from 1923 to 1940, as the first patron of the Tamil Union Cricket Club in Colombo, Sri Lanka, he played his part in the spread of the sport in the subcontinent. Right. It's almost time. Godspeed, boys! Ee sala Cup definitely namde! (Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
