` England cricketer, born overseas, seeks confirmation that his allegiance is not in doubt. Demands, and expects, equal treatment with home-grown players.'

Sounds a familiar story? It should do, both to students of contemporary English cricket and of this magazine, but it is far from a new tale, as a collection of private papers that once belonged to one of the finest amateurs of the period between the two world wars reveals.

The papers were formerly owned by K. S. Duleepsinhji, the enigmatic but often brilliantly aggressive batsman who played for Sussex and – 12 times – England before his career was brought to a premature end by tuberculosis in 1932. They were recently purchased and brought to this country by the West Sussex County Record Office.

They contain previously unpublished correspondence that supports widely-held suspicions that Duleepsinhji was deliberately overlooked by England's selectors for political reasons and demonstrates the hostile feelings of those who regarded Indian-born players as having no place in an England team.

His ill-treatment compares with anything a modern player might have experienced.

 Duleepsinhji, known popularly as ` Duleep' and ` Smith', was born in India in 1905 but educated – at the expense of his uncle, `Ranji'– in England, where he learnt his cricket. But after playing once for England against South Africa in 1929 he was dropped and not recalled for the four subsequent Tests that season, despite scoring heavily for Sussex.

No reason was publicly given for his absence, but Duleep later wrote that one of the selectors told him the South Africans objected to an Indian appearing for England (an explanation Duleep said the touring team refuted). The unspoken suspicion was that with the nationalist movement in India gathering momentum it was deemed politically unwise for England to field an `Empire' team. India was planning to field its own national team, which it first did in 1932.

 K. S. Duleepsinhji: like his uncle Ranji he scored a century for England in his first Test against Australia

 Duleep's friends and mentors were privately appalled at the way he was handled. Aubrey Faulkner, the former South African Test allrounder who was also Duleep's coach, wrote on Aug 13, 1929 to congratulate him on his dazzling performance against Kent at Hastings, where he had scored a record-breaking 115 and 246. `I think it is perfectly scandalous the way you have been treated by the England selection committee,' Faulkner wrote. `Your omission from the Tests is a blemish on English cricket. The whole thing leaves me aghast and I sincerely hope it will not affect you personally. I know you are a good enough fellow to keep going in spite of it all. But all the same I think the affair is damnably unjust to you. I should be dreadfully disappointed for you if the injustice meted out to you sours you at all. It well might.'

 Duleep was restored to the England team a year later against Australia at Lord's when, after being named 12th man for the second time in a row, he took the place of Herbert Sutcliffe, who withdrew injured at the 11th hour. He scored a breathtaking 173 and an English friend wrote to him the next day: `Too bloody marvellous for words of Smith, it really is. Have a drink on me… shall never forget you leaving the field last night. It is just about time that Lord's stood bareheaded to our dear old Smith.'

Another friend wrote from Cardiff `Things are becoming normal and justice is being done, what with Kath Meyrick being sent to jug [jail – for non-payment of rates] again and you playing against Australia.'

With his century Duleep cemented his place in the England team, but he remained unwelcome to some. Shortly after being named, along with another Indian, the Nawab of Pataudi, in England's party to tour Australia in 1932–33– the infamous Bodyline series – he received a repugnant death-threat couched in unequivocally racist language: `How can you play for England? Play with you black brothers from India, that is your place… You two may go to Australia but you will never come back At least not alive.'

In fact, Duleep did not go on the tour, because of the illness that was to terminate his career, but Pataudi did. He scored 102 in his first Test but played only twice more for England at a time when there was growing concern in some quarters about the number of foreign-born players in the England side.

Bought from Calcutta

One telegram addressed to Duleep in May 1931 said simply: `Gandhi is watching you.' It is doubtful, though, that the sender was actually Gandhi himself, as the telegram was issued in London at a time when the Indian Congress leader was known to be in India. Nor was Gandhi an enthusiast of the English game.

Other letters in the collection shed light on the Bodyline tour. Douglas Jardine, the England captain and instigator of the Bodyline strategy, hinted to Duleep in September 1932 – prior to the tour – that he had something up his sleeve to counter the prolific scoring of Donald Bradman: ` Bradman shall have a dose of quick stuff – thank you.'

Several months after the Bodyline tour Duleep received a letter from Pelham Warner, the tour manager, expressing regret at Jardine's tactics. `If you permit such bowling you would kill cricket in a year or two,' Warner wrote. `The bowling was conceived in hate. DRJ's [ Jardine's] hatred of the Australians is an obession and quite shocking. The things he said of Bradman! His was a Hymn of Hate. I cannot play cricket in his spirit or mentality…It is war – not cricket.'

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