page_title: Arthur Gilligan
section_title: MCC tour of India
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Gilligan / Remaining cricket career / MCC tour of India
caption_attribution_description: English: AER Gilligan's MCC team and the Madras team, when they met in Chepauk
context_page_description: Arthur Edward Robert Gilligan was an English first-class cricketer who captained the England cricket team nine times in 1924 and 1925, winning four Test matches, losing four and drawing one. In first-class cricket, he played as an amateur, mainly for Cambridge University and Sussex, and captained the latter team between 1922 and 1929. A fast bowler and hard-hitting lower order batsman, Gilligan completed the double in 1923 and was one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year for 1924. When his playing career ended, he held several important positions in cricket, including that of England selector and president of the Marylebone Cricket Club. A popular figure within cricket, he was widely regarded as sporting and friendly. During his playing days, Gilligan was a member of the British Fascists. He came to the notice of the Australian secret service during the 1924–25 MCC tour, and it is possible he helped to establish small fascist groups in Australia. It is unknown how long he remained a member, but the organisation practically ceased to exist by 1926.
  Gilligan played cricket for Dulwich College before the First World War, then for Cambridge, twice winning his blue.
context_section_description: During the winter of 1926–27, with other candidates unavailable, Gilligan was chosen to captain an MCC team which toured India; the side was not fully representative and did not play Test matches. In first-class games, he scored three fifties and, bowling infrequently, took ten wickets on the tour. The team, the first to tour India under the colours of the MCC, was very successful. Gilligan left most of the day-to-day organisation to his vice-captain, Raleigh Chichester-Constable, and did not take his speech-making duties particularly seriously. He nevertheless had to deal with several issues. One of the team, Jack Parsons, refused for religious reasons to take part in matches that included  
  Sunday play; Gilligan threatened to send him home but in the end he agreed to play on condition that he could leave early on a Sunday to attend religious services. Parsons was also openly critical of racial and social discrimination that he saw. Gilligan himself intervened at one point when the MCC professionals were excluded from some invitations in Calcutta; he told their hosts that no-one would attend the functions if the professionals were not included. Both the sporting and social programmes for the tour were demanding, and Gilligan chose to attend most functions for fear of offending their hosts. The players were left exhausted, necessitating the use of reinforcements to their number, including the occasional use of English cricketers who were coaching in India and, in several matches, the Maharajah of Patiala, who was a member of the MCC and entitled to play for the team.
  The tour was originally conceived to encourage cricket-playing Europeans living in India. But as the team was financed by the Maharajah of Patiala, it played Indian sides, rather than the European sides envisaged by the tour's organisers. Gilligan, in contrast to many Englishmen, was happy to play Indian teams and actively encouraged Indians to organise their own cricket rather than leave it up to white Englishmen. According to the cricket writer Mihir Bose, Gilligan, unlike others, "met Indians on terms of perfect equality". He successfully encouraged the Indians to form their own cricket board and promised to make a case with the Lord's authorities for India to become a Test playing team. He did so, and in 1929 India became a member of the Imperial Cricket Conference. Bose points out that Gilligan's positive attitude towards Indians, and that of the MCC when granting India Test status, was markedly different from that of most Englishmen. In terms of the advancement of Indian cricket, Bose writes that "Gilligan's influence was immense".
caption: A.E.R. Gilligan's MCC team and the Madras team when they met at Chepauk in 1927.
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