First Cricket Match in India

The first recorded cricket match in India took place in 1721 when English sailors played a game in the western Indian port of Cambay (Khambhat), Gujarat. But organized cricket began with the Calcutta Cricket Club, founded in 1792 — the second-oldest cricket club in the world after the MCC. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, cricket in India was an English colonial pursuit, played at gymkhanas and clubs from which Indians were excluded. The Parsi community of Bombay became the first Indians to take up the game seriously, forming the Oriental Cricket Club in 1848 and eventually challenging the Europeans to matches. By the late 19th century, cricket had become a site of cultural negotiation — Indians using the colonizer's game to assert their own identity and dignity. The British saw cricket as a tool of civilizing; Indians turned it into a weapon of self-respect.