Many forget that long before football became Nigeria's favourite pastime and true heart, sports-wise, it's soul was cricket.
It was played throughout the country from dusty plains of the North to the plush tracks of the elite schools and private clubs in both the West, East, and South.
A fact to the matter is that cricket has been played in Nigeria since the late 19th century when the game was introduced by the British. The first international game was on 25 May 1904, against the Gold Coast and the match soon became an annual fixture.
The first three matches were multi-racial while the fourth fixture in December 1906 was for Europeans only. Based on this the indigenes started their own annual fixture in 1907 though all games were halted for the First World War and did not restart until the mid-1920s.
Between the two world wars, cricket became better organised in the country with two cricket associations for the Europeans and Africans being formed in 1932 and 1933 respectively. Top-notch players from England began to appear in the annual matches against the Gold Coast which it dominated earlier.
Following Nigeria's independence in 1960, there was much interest in cricket. Annual matches against Sierra Leone and The Gambia began in 1964 and were evenly contested until the late 1970s when football began to become more popular in the country
However, it was still played in the elite schools of the country. Both the University of Ibadan and the University of Nigeria had exceptional teams while at the secondary level King's College, St Gregory's, Government College Ibadan and CMS Bariga all played competitive round-robin matches. So too was the case in the South and East where DMGS, Hope Waddell Calabar and the three Government Schools in Umuahia, Afikpo, and Owerri dominated the playing field.
One such a player was Ako Amadi who played for Government College Umuahia and would eventually also play for Nigeria. We recently persuaded him to allow us to preview that part of his upcoming book Colony that dealt with cricket then and this is what he wrote:
" At Umuahia, I had a habit of scouring through the old scorebooks in the Lower Pavilion, to read what cricketers had achieved or did not achieve before my time. Cricket scorebooks are magnificent documents that tell the entire story of a game.
In one of them, the late poet, Chris Okigbo scored three centuries in a season for the first eleven, a feat that perhaps remains unequalled till this day in the annals of Umuahia Government College.
I never saw Okigbo play, but watched several good batsmen in West Africa – Ogie Alakija, Chris Enahoro, Ewa Henshaw, Laddie, and Segun Elliot, Obukwelu of Government Secondary School Afikpo, Okoro C. of Government Secondary School Owerri, the Englishman Chris Marshall of Shell, the Sri Lankan Tony Van der Wall, an Indian Kapadia, the Gambian Ibrou Taal.
I will save the stories of Nigerian bowlers for another day. Some of them had caused me bodily harm!
In England, I watched the strokeplay of the mercurial West Indians: Garfield Sobers, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Lawrence Rowe and Rohan Kanhai. I still feel a sense of regret that Nigeria has never realized its potential in all forms of sports. Sadly!
I have played cricket for Nigeria in the Gambia, Ghana and Sierra Leone, captained Western Nigeria Schoolboys at the Morocco-Clarke inter-regional school competitions in 1965, and the senior Lagos side in 1981.
From all saw, I wonder if any school in Nigeria produced anything near the qualities with the bat of Davidson Chigbo, captain of Umuahia in 1961. Like many Umuahians he did not play cricket after school, especially so after a nagging knee injury hampered his movement. But A.B.C. Nwosisi, Namse Eno, Thompson Iloabachie, Kelsey Harrison and Eben Spiff all went on to play for Nigeria.
There are not many schools in the world in which a games master and a student played for the national team at the same time. That happened at Umuahia! In 1959/60 Edmund Wilson the chemistry but also cricket master at Government College Umuahia, and Nwude, the captain of the school team were both playing cricket for the Nigerian XI.
Cricket epitomizes fairness, respect and morality. By extolling and appreciating the values of achievement in the games fields of Government College Umuahia, we were brought closer to that belief enshrined in the school logo that indeed humankind could shine as one in the process of civilization. I am writing from memory about an epoch that lies astride of the demarcation line between colony and sovereignty in Nigeria, a period in our history that will never be forgotten.
When I was in the process of applying to enter government Collge Umuahia cricket would again play an important role.
The interview panel of Messrs Wareham, Wilson and Garrod went through my papers and asked a few minor questions.
Then came what sounded like the key question: they had heard from my brother who was already in Class 4 that I played cricket in primary school. Where? And with whom? It was like an accusation levelled at a suspected criminal. The 3 Englishmen braced up for my reply.
To me, this was an easy question to answer. I even giggled sheepishly while explaining how we made our own bats from the base of palm fronds and used golf balls picked up in the rough near the Magistrate’s Court at Owerri when we went swimming in the Nworie River. I further narrated that my father had brought a cricket set from London in 1953, the bats were autographed Denis Compton and Keith Miller.
They listened attentively but remained unsmiling. Mr Wareham cut me short and asked: did I know that if I came into Umuahia Government ColIege I would have to play a lot of cricket? I replied it would be a delight. Mr Garrod pushed his hair back and looked up at Mr Wilson. They laughed, and I thought my chances had gone up in flames.
I was asked to go, and call the next boy whose name was on a slip of paper handed to me. My interview had been very brief, on account of which I became worried. Why? Candidates before me had spent an eternity in the principal’s office answering a host of questions. I must have failed. I had a gut feeling something had gone wrong, and trudged out of Mr Wareham’s office deflated on weak legs.
My father could hear my train coming. Sitting in one of the olive-green coaches, covered in coal soot I could see his excitement as the locomotive pulled up, screeching to a halt. He was pacing up and down the platform at the Aba Railway Station like a caged lion. It was on the afternoon of my return, after almost a week of absence for the interview at Umuahia.
As I came down from the train his anxiety was palpable – how had I performed at the interview, and what questions did they ask, why was I looking dejected? I told him my interview had been a conversation mainly about cricket. “Then you have passed!” exclaimed my father. He proceeded to lecture me on the emotional attachment of the English to the game of cricket."
BY A. AMADI Government College Umuahia Class of 59 Consultant Ecologist, Harvard University
