Tripunithura Cricket Club

Till the 1940s the game of cricket was unknown in the royal town of Tripunithura, the erstwhile capital of the Cochin State, at least in the form of matches. There were a few daring young princes who talked about the game and even practiced on a crude concrete wicket at the Princes’ Club, (as Tripunithura Cricket Club was known then), which then was exclusively for the male members of the Cochin Royalty. Apart from two or three colleges in the State, cricket was played by the Englishmen at Thalassery and Fort Cochin mostly drawing players from among the ‘commoners’ for a match. In 1948 the Victoria College team from Palakkad under the captaincy of A. K. Haridas came to play a couple of matches at Ernakulam. Haridas requested K. V. Kelappan Thampuran, the first secretary of the Kerala Cricket Association and the driving force behind the game in Tripunithura, if they could play a match at Tripunithura.

By then Princes’ Club had a team and the then Dewan Sir C. G. Herber, himself a cricketer, gave the club land where matches could be played. Thus on an uneven patch of ground, on an improvised pitch, perhaps

with no strict dress code, the first game was played. This ground was later developed into the historic Palace Oval.

Hospital Rd, Kannankulangara, Thrippunithura, Ernakulam, Kerala