Sabah sports since headhunting days

Published on: Saturday, September 25, 1909

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September 25th, 1909 - Head Hunting, the popular pastime of collecting human heads, was practiced with great gusto and enthusiasm before the representatives of the Chartered Company, with great patience, introduced the more agreeable modern sports. The local up-starts soon learnt that outshining in a game of football or becoming a Victor Ludorum in one of occasional main Januaries or even beating the other Don Juans of the village in pony races was looked upon by the modern prospective brides with greater favour than their ancient prototypes ever thought of the once supposedly he-man ,standards of collecting the largest number of skulls. Coming under the stricter training at the Constabulary Depot, offsprings of the fiery Muruts and Dusuns of the interior plains, athletes like Lakai, Madan, Tawit and Tsngkas, began to assert their natural aptitude in athletics and Sgt. Tingkas, employing an excellent “ Eastern cut off “ style, became the first North Bornean to raise the local high jump record from 5ft. 61/2ins. to 5ft. 1/2ins.

In starting with racing which is really old as the Colony’s hills, the great sport, an organised affair, had its ebb and flow with the fluctuating fortunes of the general prosperity of the State. The first race meeting originally advertised for 1889 was held on 24th April, 1892, and according to the Ol’timers the earlier meetings “ were run on the road that passes through the Sandakan Club “ of the prewar era. The sport, however, was soon organised and regular race meetings were held at Sandakan, Kudat and Jesselton in the hey-day of the Tobacco Barons of Borneo right up to the might conflagration of the 1st World War. That event appears to have cast its melancholy shadow and rang the death-knell of racing at Sandakan and Kudat. But as Rubber Kings, who had replaced the Barons, came into their own with the second rubber boom, Jesselton Turf Club remained the only postwar organisation of is kind and had the distinction of entertaining Royalty at one of its meetings. But when the general trade depression appeared to be setting in after the second skyhigh rubber prices of 1925-6, the Jesselton Turf Club, too, began to feel the pinch and its Autumn meeting of 1928 was the last to be held under its aegis. When the third anticipated rubber boon did not materialise and our principal industry found itself in the jaws of a rubber restriction scheme, a band of enthusiastic sport lovers, headed by Resident R. F. Evans and Constabulary Commandant W. C. Adams, revived the fascinating sport of pony racing under the banner of Gymkhana Club and it was this club in 1946 that resuscitated the sport after Second World War and history was repeated when, with the rubber prices showing an upward trend, the Jesselton Gymkhana Club became the North Borneo Turf Club in 1950. Apart from the above highlights of racing, however, the exciting sport is indulged in various parts of the Colony and Keningau and Papar races have quite recently become regular fixtures of those areas. Lumba kuda very often forms a prominent feature of village fairs at which sometimes our Lumba kerbau also comes into its own.

“But though where’er our English Standard blows, Our English game of games beneath it goes”

True to the famous poet’s reference that the great game has a place in our sports history. Since the very first match played at Sandakan on 2nd. August, 1902, picked-up matches of various description and tests of strength between the Government and Planters and local teams against H. M. Naval teams and even occasional inter-town matches have kept the game alive. Though Sandakan also started a co-ordinated effort to widen its influence, Jesselton stole the show by starting a network of cricket nursaries in 1936 and the sponsors had the satisfaction of unearthing talent in some unsuspected regions.

Though the town and its suburbs still lay in ruins cricket enthusiasts revived the game at the dawn of 1946 when B.M.A. defeated the Gurkha Rifles of the Indian Army.

The fast and fascinating game of field hockey has had a fair following. While the trail-blazing may be said to have been done with the first match, “Jesselton Vs. H M.S. Merlin “ on 25th September, 1909, and while the junketing navigators of this famous survey ship of the Royal Navy continued, for a number of years, to test the skill of local exponents of the crooked stick, the popularity of the game was restricted to the playing field of the Armed Constabulary. Since 1936, however, the circle of its participants has been greatly widened and the post-war years have seen the emergence of a number of players who have played in high class hockey in various parts of the world and the game has recently seen the introduction of regular inter-club fixtures and which auguries well for its future.

Polo the most ancient of all the games played with a stick, though comparatively young among popular sports, has its enthusiastic adherents in some of the remotest corners of the Territory. This has been done through the untiring efforts of some of the keenest sportsmen and while the writer has been unable to locate the date of the “first ever” polo match, he has been struck by references to the good work of various pioneers and which invariably ended “The trail of Dick.... marker by ‘abandoned’ polo field.

Without going into the local antecedents of this aristocratic pastime, the establishment of the State Championships provides an excellent take off. The President and the Court of Directors of the Chartered Company presented for competition, in 1928, two magnificent Challenge Cups for the Singles and Doubles Championships of the State respectively. The competition played an invaluable part in enhancing the popularity of the game though, in the fourteen years’ history of the tournament, that grand old man of North Borneo, Brigadier C.F.C. Macaskie won the singles seven times apart from holding a string of success in the Doubles series.