'Maidan hai hara, bheed se bhara, wicket hain gareh, tayyar hum khare....khel shuru hoga pone gyarah'

'That cricket is going to stay in India there cannot be a shadow of a doubt; it has taken hold all over the country, and chokras can be seen playing in every village with any sort of old bat and ball that they can lay hands on. I should hope that it will do something to get over any racial antipathy; for instance, it must, I think, bring the several races together more and more, in a spirit of harmony that should be the spirit in which cricket is played. Unquestionably, it arouses excitement and enthusiasm, and extreme ambition that one's own side should succeed, bit it also ought to lead to friendliness, and that is what is needed in India. East will always be East, and West, West, but the crease is not a very broad line of demarcation – so narrow, indeed, that it ought to help bring about friendly relations.' Lord Harris (1921)

Lord Harris served in the House of Lords as Under Secretary of the state of India from 25 June,1885, then as Parliamentary under secretary of the state of war from 4 August, 1886 to1890 in the Conservative Government.

He served as Governor of the Presidency of Bombay in British India from 1890 to 1894 . His appointment was not universally well regarded, with one anonymous writer penning a poem expressing the hope that Bombay would not suffer too greatly from Harris' political inexperience.

His governorship was notable mainly for his enthusiastic pursual of the sport of cricket amongst his fellow Europeans in the colony, at the expense of connecting with the native population. When the interracial Bombay riots of 1893 broke out, Harris was out of the city at Ganeshkind enjoying cricket matches. He returned to Bombay only on the ninth day of rioting, and then primarily to attend a cricket match there.

Many later writers credited Harris with almost single-handedly introducing and developing the sport in India . The game was, however, well established among the natives before his arrival. Furthermore, in 1890, he rejected a petition signed by over 1,000 locals to relocate European polo players to another ground so that the locals could use the area for cricket matches. It was only in 1892 that he granted a parcel of land to the newly formed Mahomedan Gymkhana for a cricket field, adjacent to land already used by the Parsi Gymkhana. His reluctance to do so is evident in his written comment:

I don't see how we can refuse these applicants; but I will steadfastly refuse any more grants once a Gymkhana has been established under respectable auspices by each nationality, and tell applicants that ground having been set apart for their nationality they are free to take advantage of it by joining that particular club.

When Harris left India, a publisher circulated a collection of newspaper extracts from his time as governor. The introduction stated:

Never during the last hundred years has a Governor of Bombay been so sternly criticised and never has he met with such widespread unpopularity on account of his administration as Lord Harris.

On his return to England, Harris again served in the Conservative Government, as a lord in waiting from 16 July, 1895 to 4 December 1900.

---- Source Wikipedia

I found Mr. Harris's comment quite interesting and true.