Rabindranath Tagore's birthday will be celebrated twice this year, on May 7 (today) and Baishakh 25 (tomorrow).

Yes, he had tried to play cricket.

No, he was not quite successful at it. He did not like it either.
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On January 3, 1962, Jagadish Chandra Roy wrote a first-person account to Anandabazar Patrika. Here is a crude translation.

This was reproduced by Sankari Prasad Basu in his book.

(By the way, Satyendranath, elder brother of Rabindranath, was the first Indian to join the ICS.)
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"Satyendranath Tagore used to reside in 19, Store Road. He used to spend every paisa of his pension for the country. One of his missions was to hire bodybuilders to help train little children. Rabindranath used to participate thrice a week."
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"The Military Grounds were next to 19 Store Road. There used to be a famous cricket club for the British. Indians were not allowed inside."

"Rabindranath saw them play once and informed his brother. Satyendranath sent his manager and me to buy bats, balls, nets, etc."
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"He insisted on buying these from Indian shops. These were acquired from a shop to the north of Esplanade. Practice began the day after. Satyendranath hired two Anglo-Indians as coaches. Rabindranath travelled from Jorasanko almost everyday, to both watch and play."
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"But he never enjoyed cricket. He could not focus hard enough."

"A ball once hit him on the leg. The injury kept him out of cricket for three months, then forever. He persisted with the lathi, his favourite sport."

But that is about playing. Did he follow cricket?
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In Baisakh 1312 (April or May 1905), he delivered a speech for in a university, where he dropped a bombshell.

"দিনের পড়া তো শেষ হইল, তার পরে ক্রিকেট খেলাতেও নাহয় রণজিৎ হইয়া উঠিলাম। তার পরে?"
"We shall be done with studies, then become Ranjit at cricket. Then?"
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Now, while Ranjit might have meant Ranjitsinhji, it could also have been a common noun (victorious at war).

But one cannot rule out Ranji.

This was 1905. In the six previous seasons, he had averaged
1899 63.18
1900 87.57
1901 70.51
1902 46.08
1903 56.58
1904 74.17
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In 1904, just the previous year, Ranji had a phase when he scored eight hundreds and five fifties in ten weeks.

Tagore had definitely heard of Ranji. But to what extent?

While digging more into this, I came across a piece called from Chaitra 1308 (March or April 1902).
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"রামমোহন রায় আজ যদি ইংলণ্ডে যাইতেন তবে তাঁহার গৌরব ক্রিকেট-খেলোয়াড় রঞ্জিতসিংহের গৌরবের কাছে খর্ব হইয়া থাকিত।"
"Had Rammohan Roy been in England today, even his achievements would have been eclipsed by Ranjitsinhji".

Now check Ranji's numbers in 1900 and 1901 above.
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This cleared all doubts.

Then there were his prose and poetry, where he mentions cricket *and* something called bat-ball.

These were different.

In one of his autobiographies, Chhelebela, he mentions bat-ball as "ক্রিকেটের অত্যন্ত দূর কুটুম্ব" (a distant relative of cricket).
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It was not ডাংগুলি/danda-gilli either.

In Chirakumar Sabha, Sreesh mentions gilli-danda and bat-ball as separate sports.

In Jogajog, Bipradas' school had a store that used to stock books, copies, pens, knives, bat-ball, spinning tops, and packaged peanuts.
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I wonder whether these were cricket bats or bat-ball bats.

If it were the latter, bat-ball, whatever it was, was not an expensive sport, then.
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