In summer 1941, Lieutenant Douglas Tatham Collins arrived in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, from his origins in the village of Aslockton in Nottinghamshire. He was 21 and had been posted south from Ireland, where his South Staffordshire battalion had been recovering from Dunkirk. According to his autobiography, A Tear for Somalia, published in 1960 to coincide with Somali independence, the young man's happiest memory was of a century he compiled in the 1939 season. It was unclear whether he made it for his village team, whose website boasts it dates back to before 1815, or for Bestwood, linked to a celebrated baronial estate. In Somalia, Collins mused romantically on his remembrance of smoke curling from the Bestwood Lodge's chimney while cricket took place on the field below. Even when watching alluring Somali women, Collins told himself that cricket was his first and only passion.

Despite the crucial events occurring in the European, North African and Pacific wars at the time, Collins found it hard to take his mind off cricket during his imperial posting. He describes a major, hardened by years of service in Britain's African colonies, who interviewed him in Mombasa, as having a face "the colour of an old, well-worn cricket ball". The major was inducting Collins into the Somali Gendarmerie, which was tasked with replacing the Italian Fascist administration of Somalia, Eritrea and the Ogaden, territory measuring about 720,000 square miles.

At least 5000 Italians still lived in their ex-colony, and 1.5 million Somalis, a third of whom were nomads and difficult to count accurately. Officially speaking, Somalis had been ruled by Italy since 1889, but a violent form of Fascist law and order, especially in the harsh north of the colony, was imposed by the Fascist boss, Cesare De Vecchi di Val Cismon, between 1924 and 1927. In February 1941, Mogadishu fell without a fight to a rag-tag British imperial army, and by May, Alula and Cape Guardafui on the edge of the Gulf of Aden had also surrendered.

Collins had been given no training in the job confronting him and his fellows, although he quickly realised that some British were contenting themselves with being what he and his friends unwieldily called the BBBWNNNOM (Big-Bottomed Bastards Who were Never North Of Mogadishu). His own first posting was a relatively cushy one to Afgoi (Afgooye) up the Scebelli valley, west from the capital on one of the few paved roads in Somalia. There he was under the command of Major Ron Myers, an Australian who had engaged in colonial farming in Kenya. Soon they were talking cricket, often through the night, helped by a bottle and a half of the Italian liquore Millefiori, an agreeable leftover from fascism. Myers told his new lieutenant in an Australian manner that "Pommy bastards were hopeless", and according to Collins' memoirs, referred to the "last Test" as proof. In fact, that would have been the one at The Oval in August 1938, when England compiled 903 for 7 against the injury-ridden Australians and won by a record innings and 579 runs. Perhaps he meant another.

In 1942, Collins was summoned back to Mogadishu and given a more taxing role. He was informed by Colonel Patrick Mundy, first commander of the Somali Gendarmerie, that up north in the "Land of Punt", European control had collapsed. "Tribal fights had been going on for centuries," he added, somewhat unhelpfully. Collins was being posted there alone except for a platoon of ascaris, indigenous aides of the Gendarmerie (he still used the Italian term for such men). Collins wrote: "I was to be transferred to the Furthest Shag of the Never Never Land, first of all to an island called Dante for a few months, and then to take over a place called Alula." He took with him a large supply of liquor, much of it produced by the Italian-owned Cioffi concern, which, depending on demand, managed to convert dates to gin, brandy and grappa. Collins also brought with him an outsize leather cricket bag, carrying all his personal gear for a match, and even his elegant club blazer. He added a strip of 22-by-five-foot coconut matting and "two extra pudding balls" - apparently hard rubber ones.

A 1914 map depicts Italian and British holdings in Somalia, including Cape Guardafui in the north-east © Getty Images

Collins was driven slowly towards Hafun, (now Xaafun, past the isthmus that leads to the easternmost point of continental Africa). This was the place the Italians had presumptuously called "Dante". No proper roads existed that far north of Mogadishu. He was escorted by an Italian driver, "Rino" (quite a few Italians worked in their ex-colony), though their countries were still at war, who entertained him by singing Pagliacci and trying, unsuccessfully, to teach him how to eat spaghetti. The deep cultural clash between the two European empires was embodied in how Collins thought you ate pasta by cutting it into small pieces with a knife.

After months of service in Hafun/Dante, site of a salt factory that was the largest in the world in the 1930s, Collins pressed further north by camel and foot, alone except for his ascari escort, reaching Alula in mid-December 1942. He did not know but in the greater wars the Germans were being surrounded in Stalingrad, the Japanese driven back from Guadalcanal (but holding their own with Indian forces in Myanmar) and Field Marshal Rommel was admitting that he could not keep Tunisia. In stark contrast to the situation when Collins first reached Somalia, World War II was passing into Allied hands.

According to his memoir, Collins was innocently thinking not of war but Christmas. He had brought tinned turkey and pudding in his stores. But first he ventured to Guardafui, where the Fascists had built a celebrated lighthouse on the model of a fascio littorio (a bundle of sticks bound together, enclosing an axe, used as a symbol of authority in classical times, and by the Fascists). When he returned to Alula, Collins did so in the company of Carlo, the Italian lighthouse keeper, who, he had decided, could cook his Christmas lunch, sing from Aida and Rigoletto, and as perhaps the only other white man in the immense territory, captain the opposition side in a cricket match Collins had planned. Before leaving Alula, Collins had given his sergeant, Haji Dif - a British Somali, who had been to the UK and recognised the names Bradman and Hobbs - clear instructions: "I want you to prepare a cricket pitch, for on Christmas Day, I want a game of cricket, and I intend to teach all the askaris, the Illalos, [irregular local troops] and the tribesmen the game. It will be good for them. It will teach them to play the game and all that sort of thing. Take their mind off squabbling about a lot of wretched water-holes and date gardens."

At 3pm that Christmas afternoon, all was ready. Haji Dif had marked out an oval on the sand outside Collins' elegant, two-storey residenza, an imperial building erected under fascism. At the centre of the field, Haji unrolled the coconut matting to be the pitch. He was to umpire at both ends. Collins emerged dressed for the toss "in a cream shirt, club tie, cricket flannels and blazer". He led a team of ascari. But he had decided Carlo, "only" an Italian, after all, in his Briton's racist assumptions, which stretched as easily to the UK's ex-foes in Somalia as to the "natives", was not man enough for cricket captaincy and replaced him as leader with the Illalo corporal. Villagers, arranged in importance up to the local sultan, crowded the edge of the field as eager observers.

The lighthouse at Cape Guardafui, circa the 1930s. This file was derived from Guardafui Lighthouse.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0

Collins opened the bowling and removed three Illalos with his first six balls. At the other end, an ascaro raced in, paused at the stumps - they had been quickly made by a local artisan on Haji's instruction - halted, and then threw with all his might, using the familiar action for spearing an enemy. "Shades of Harold Larwood and body-line," Collins wrote. The no-ball rule was not applied but each of his first three balls earned the Illalos four byes as they sped past the astonished and cowed wicketkeeper. Then came a problem. A delivery was somehow hit towards cover. The batters ran and ran and ran, but no fielder moved to gather the ball. The opposition captain conferred with Collins and Haji, explaining that local tribal custom decreed that Somali males did no physical work. Such activity was restricted to Midgans, another tribe kept locally as virtual slaves. What should Collins do?

His answer was to replace the ascari fieldsmen with men from the local gaol, many pent up under fascist rule. They were watched from the boundary by their Illalo warders and told they must field, which they did under protest. The game resumed. Collins wrote of one of the freshly recruited fielders that at one point "the alleged murderer [made] little effort to stop the ball as it whizzed past him".

Now another event. Collins bowled to Carlo, who came in at 25 for 4. Sixteen byes - yet another delivery, legal or otherwise, must have rocketed past the keeper - and nine for the unfielded hit. Collins delivered a "fastish ball this time which by some freak ran up the splice of his bat, striking him on his nose". Blood flowed. Carlo fled, crying out: "Berdio, cattivo, molto cattivo" (Oh god, bad, very bad) and was not seen again for a "month". The onlookers were delighted. Bloodied "cricket" might be as much fun as their own battles (and the colonising Italian had been worsted by the new English tenente).

The match moved to its conclusion, the ascari totalling 57. Following a tea interval, Collins commenced the Illalo innings with 14 in four balls. Then he was caught and bowled after whacking a ball back to the bowler, who in desperation clutched it to his stomach. Successive batters did not manage too well, but the Illalos also managed 57. A tie, deserving almost to be as famous as the one between Australia and West Indies in Brisbane in December 1960. Celebration followed. Collins had bought the fattest camel in Alula and, after the game, joined the locals in feasting on it.

More came later. As Collins recalled, the tied match was the forerunner to a game played every Saturday for over a year, except when he was called out to settle tribal warfare or went to Guardafui to see that the lighthouse operated under Carlo's care and that the local tradition of piracy had not resumed. Collins also entertained himself sexually with the Alula sultan's daughter, and with petitioning the BBBWNNNOM for war news. None came.

A cover of the Italian Fascist party magazine from 1936 shows Italy's empire in north-east Africa © Getty Images

Eventually a superior officer in the Gendarmerie arrived. Collins was to be replaced. Surely, he would like to transfer south? Collins and his visitor drank deep. It emerged that Haji had reported a problem. The locals were complaining about "a torture called 'kricket', colonel sahib. They say this Tenente far worse than Italian officers. All say they tortured every Saturday. They request you remove him and replace him with an officer full of the milk of human kindness."

Collins rebutted this charge. "It will take time, sir," he stated, "but I really believe that through the medium of cricket, I can break down the caste barriers between the tribes and so end this constant tribal fitina [battle]. Give me another year here and I can accomplish it." But the colonel refused and Collins was sent away for a month's furlough in Kenya.

Collins worked for the Gendarmerie until it was dismissed in 1950, when, to his disgust, its rule was replaced by a United Nations trusteeship granted to Italy. He had hoped for national independence via the Somali Youth League, the country's first political party. In his writing, there are only two further cricket references. The first is of a visit, when Collins was stationed inland at Iskushuban, from the Irishman Gerald Hanley (another Gendarmerie memoirist). "The Irish are splendid drinkers but poor cricketers," Collins remembered. However, he did "cajole" Hanley into bowling at him using a large headless statue of Mussolini as back stop. Hanley does not recall the event in his writings. Collins noted dolefully elsewhere, "My Somali troops were enthusiastic over football but cricket they did not like."

In an unexplained detail, he adds that he did play once in Mogadishu, where, on 48, he was bowled by a grubber. But for that sad fate, might he have pressed on to another century, this one out in imperial places and not in the shadow of a Nottingham stately home? Could his passion have been transferred to Somalis in their capital, thereby ensuring that their country took a path that might have led them today to be worthy opponents of Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan?

An illustration of a scene from an 1896 battle in the Banadir Resistance, the decades-long guerilla war against Italian colonial expansion in southern Somalia © Getty Images

Collins did not die until 1999. Return visits to England did not cure what an Italian would call his mal d'Africa (cruel love for Africa). For a time, he joined the big game hunters of white East Africa, although always viewed by them as more a gentleman than a player. Any chance of him again settling in Somalia ended when, in 1969, Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, a friendly sometime chief from the area near Alula, who had risen to the presidency, and who Collins hoped could develop into a reliable and generous patron, was assassinated in Mogadishu.

Later, when he was trying to escape a wounded but attacking water buffalo, Collins had to cope with accidentally shooting dead his younger brother Edmund. Drinking, which had been a central part of Gendarmerie life, did not lessen. Collins wrote, but few read him. He died alone at a Kenyan outpost, seemingly a useless relic of a lost imperial world. Yet he was a man deserving a niche in the history of cricket across the nations. During a parlous wartime, RC Robertson-Glasgow suggested optimistically in the 1942 Wisden: "Cricketers of every age and every degree of ability or ineptitude, [still] seize the fleeting hour to bat and bowl." In lonely Somalia, DT Collins had followed that counsel.

Sources:
A Tear for Somalia, Douglas Collins (1960)
Tales from Africa, Douglas Collins (1995)
The First to be Freed: the Record of British Military Administration in Eritrea and Somalia, 1941-1943, The British Ministry of Information (1944)
White Hunters: the Golden Age of African Safaris, Brian Herne (1999)
Una Sconfitta dell'intelligenza, Angelo Del Boca (1993)
Mussolini, RJB Bosworth (revised edition, 2010)
Il Faro di Mussolini: il Colonialismo Italiano in Somalia Oltre il Sogno Imperiale, Alberto Alpozzi (2017).

Richard Bosworth is an emeritus fellow at the University of Oxford's Jesus College, and the author and editor of about 30 books on modern Italian history

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