278 POLO 



I took my team up there in 1865, and the Maharaja got up 

 several matches for me. I and my band, who had been so proud 

 of our victories in Calcutta, were simply nowhere in Munnipore. 

 We never won a single game. The game was fast and furious. 

 The Maharaja's men were his picked team, the best players in the 

 State clean, clever, and scientific in their strokes and sharp as 

 needles. The Munnipoories, again, were no respecters of persons. 

 It was quite permissible, and recognised as lawful, to ride at and 

 through anything or anybody that came between the player and 

 the spot where the ball lay. I was once caught in this position 

 and dilemma, and was simply sent spinning, pony and all, and 

 got considerably shaken and bruised. 



To return, however, after this long digression, to the ques- 

 tion of when and where polo was first introduced into British 

 India and attracted the notice of Europeans. There is but 

 little doubt that it was first played in British territory in Cachar 

 in 1854-5. Tea-planting was then only being started in that 

 lovely valley, where some dozen or so planters had begun open- 

 ing up their various estates. The valley and villages were full 

 of Munnipoories, resident agriculturists who had been obliged 

 to leave their native State for political reasons, or who had 

 emigrated voluntarily, taking with them their families and polo 

 ponies. Each group of these villages had its little native polo 

 club, and games were of frequent occurrence. About this 

 time, before the country was opened up, the tea-gardens were 

 so scattered, and so far away from the Sudder station of Cachar, 

 that except at Christmas or at the annual Doorga Pojah festivals 

 the planters hardly ever came in to the station ; but when they 

 did on rare occasions, a scratch polo match would be got up 

 on the detachment parade ground between half a dozen Euro- 

 peans and twice the number of Munnipoories that is to say, 

 three Europeans and six Munnipoories on each side. Thus it 

 came about that in 1854 the game attracted the attention of 

 a young subaltern of the Bengal Army Lieut. J. F. Sherer, 

 Adjutant of the Sylhet Light Infantry (now the 44th Native 

 Infantry). Soon after this Lieutenant (now Major- General) 

 Sherer was employed politically on the north-east frontier, and 



