Ranjitsinhji's 154* on Test Debut — Old Trafford, 1896

Ranjitsinhji had been born in 1872 in Sarodar in present-day Gujarat, adopted as heir to the Maharaja of Nawanagar then disinherited, and sent to Cambridge in 1888. He won his cricket Blue in 1893 after a public campaign by F.S. Jackson. By 1895 his county form for Sussex was unanswerable. Lord Harris and the MCC committee had repeatedly held him back from England selection; the line, repeated in private letters now in the MCC archive, was that he was 'a bird of passage' and not English.

Australia, captained by Harry Trott, had won the First Test at Lord's by an innings. The series stood 1-0 going into Manchester. Lancashire's selection committee announced Ranji's inclusion the week before the Test; the news dominated the cricket press. Australian players, asked for a comment, said they had no objection.

Ranjitsinhji had been the outstanding batsman of the 1895 and 1896 county seasons — 1,775 first-class runs in 1895, 2,780 in 1896 at an average over 50. The MCC selection committee, which picked the First Test side at Lord's, omitted him without comment. Wisden later described the omission as 'unsporting'; the Manchester Guardian was less polite. Lancashire, which under their own constitution selected the Old Trafford Test, picked him at once.

England batted second on a fast Manchester pitch. Ranji came in at 96 for 4 and made 62 from a 145-run partnership with his Sussex captain W.L. Murdoch, beaten only when Tom McKibbin had him caught behind. The innings was a respectable Test debut. The second was extraordinary. England, following on 181 behind, were 109 for 4 at the close of the second day with Ranji 41 not out. He came out the next morning, a Saturday, with rain threatening and Australia pressing for victory.

What followed was a session that the Manchester Guardian's cricket correspondent, Charles Stewart Caine, described as 'wholly without precedent'. Ranji added 113 in 130 minutes between the start of play and lunch, becoming the first man to score a hundred before lunch on any day of a Test. He glanced anything pitched on or just outside leg-stump for four — a stroke that no English batsman had developed and that Australian fielders had not been positioned for. He cut the off-side bowling square and late.

He was last out at 154 not out, having batted across 190 minutes for the day. England had set Australia 125 to win; Frank Iredale and Joe Darling chased it down for the loss of three wickets, and Australia won the Test by three wickets. The result mattered briefly; the innings mattered for ever.

“He moves like the limbs of a fine Italian statue, swiftly and yet with grace.”

“When you have got a bat in your hands, you should think only of what you intend to do with it.”

Ranji played the Third Test at The Oval and the next sixteen Test matches across his England career. He averaged 44.95 in Tests across 15 matches — extraordinary for the era. He returned to India in 1907 to take up the Nawanagar throne, founded the Ranji Trophy by his name in 1934, and remained a presence in English cricket administration as Chancellor of the Indian Chamber of Princes.