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As Ramachandra Guha chronicles in A Corner of a Foreign Field, Baloo grew up in Poona, where his father worked in a British ammunition factory. He and his brother would play cricket with the equipment discarded by British soldiers. Baloo's first job as a boy was sweeping and rolling the pitch at the local cricket club. Soon he was also bowling to club members to help them improve their batting skills. Baloo bowled for hundreds of hours, fine-tuning his own technique in the process. Not once was he given the opportunity to bat.

Word of Baloo's bowling prowess soon began to spread, and he was invited to play for the local Poona Hindus squad. Baloo was kept separate from his teammates off the pitch, and some were reluctant even to touch the same ball as he did. [...]

In 1905, the Prince of Wales visited India, with one of the highlights being a cricket showdown between some of India's and England's best players. Baloo's bowling helped the Indian side cruise to victory over their imperial opponents, and Baloo, now 30, was allowed to dine with the rest of the team. Papers across the nation hailed it as a victory over caste prejudice. The Indian Social Reformer wrote that it was "a landmark in the nation's emancipation from the old disuniting ... customs." [...]

Guha compares Baloo's accomplishment to that of another sports icon, the man who broke baseball's color line, Jackie Robinson. Like Robinson, Guha writes, "Baloo broke through a previously impenetrable social barrier as much by force of personality as by sporting skill alone." 

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