The Imperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society PDF
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THE IMPERIAL GAME Cricket, Culture and Society EDITED BY BRIAN STODDART AND KEITH A. P. SANDIFORD General Editor: Andrew S. Thompson Founding Editor: John M. MacKenzie When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. Studies in Imperialism is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding area of scholarship. The imperial game Geography and imperialism, 1820–1940 ed. Morag Bell, Robin Butlin and Michael Heffernan Acts of supremacy The British Empire and the stage, 1790–1930 J. S. Bratton et al. Britannia’s children Reading colonialism through children’s books and magazines Kathryn Castle Western medicine as contested knowledge ed. Andrew Cunningham and Bridie Andrews Unfit for heroes Reconstruction and soldier settlement in the Empire between the wars Kent Fedorowich Empire and sexuality The British experience Ronald Hyam ‘An Irish Empire?’ Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire ed.Keith Jeffery The language of empire Myths and metaphors of popular imperialism, 1880–1918 Robert H. MacDonald The empire of nature Hunting, conservation and British imperialism John M. MacKenzie Propaganda and empire The manipulation of British public opinion, 1880–1960 John M. MacKenzie Imperialism and popular culture ed. John M. MacKenzie Popular imperialism and the military, 1850–1950 ed. John M. MacKenzie Gender and imperialism ed. Clare Midgley Colonial masculinity The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ Mrinalini Sinha Jute and empire The Calculta jute wallahs and the landscape of empire Gordon T. Stewant The French empire at war, 1940–45 Martin Thomas Asia in Western fiction ed. Robin W. Winks and James R. Rush Travellers in Africa British travelogues, 1850–1900 Tim Youngs [ ii ] The imperial game Cricket, Culture and Society edited by Brian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Manchester [ iii ] Copyright © Manchester University Press 1998 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS ALTRINCHAM STREET, MANCHESTER, M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 4978 4 hardback First published 1998 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Trump Medieval by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong [ iv ] CONTENTS General editor’s introduction — page vi Notes on contributors — page vii Introduction Keith A. P. Sandiford page 1 1 England Keith A. P. Sandiford 9 2 Australia Richard Cashman 34 3 South Africa Christopher Merrett and John Nauright 55 4 West Indies Brian Stoddart 79 5 New Zealand Greg Ryan 93 6 The Subcontinent Richard Cashman 116 7 Other cultures Brian Stoddart 135 8 At the end of the day’s play: reflections on cricket, culture and meaning Brian Stoddart 150 Index — 167 [ v ] GENERAL EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Sports history offers many profound insights into the character and complexities of modern imperial rule. However oppressive the political and economic power of the West may have been, imperialism was also a source of cultural exchanges at many different levels. Among such mutual borrowings, sports remain the most prominent and popular in the post-colonial world. But although the transfer of various sporting forms from the dominant to the subordinate people (they also frequently moved the other way) sometimes carries the air of an attempt at social control, the sports themselves soon develop an independent life of their own. Players and spectators swiftly ensure that the sports are modified and adapted to their own ends within the particular cultural, social and political contexts into which they have been planted. This has certainly been the case with the quintessentially English game of cricket. In the course of the nineteenth century, it was transferred to all the continents in which the British exercised power. But soon it developed social and cultural – and eventually political – mutations. In new climates and environments, in the hands of different peoples and classes, it was converted from an apparent instrument of subjection into a perceived tool of cultural and political freedoms. Its history hence becomes closely bound up with the march of nationalism, decolonisation and post-colonial response. It also becomes a field for the creation and celebration of imperial, colonial and nationalist heroes. This book examines all these characteristics of the diffusion and conversion of cricket and much else besides. Although cricketing history has become a well-worked field, no other book matches this one in its geographical range and chronological depth. It covers all five continents and spans the years from the early nineteenth century to the 1970s. In thus bringing their analysis up to date, the contributors are able to examine the survival and development of cricket in the face of the emergence of the relatively new sports imperialism of the United States. All historians of imperialism, nationalism, sports, as well as many cricketing enthusiasts, will find much of interest here. John M. MacKenzie [ vi ] NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS RICHARD CASHMAN is Associate Professor in History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, where he is also Director of the Olympic Studies Centre. He has written widely on cricket in Australia and the Indian subcontinent with books on Spofforth, women’s cricket in Australia, crowds and other historical aspects. He was General Editor of the Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket and The A-Z of Australian Cricketers. Professor Cashman has also published widely on other aspects of sport. CHRISTOPHER MERRETT is the Chief Librarian of the University of Natal at Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. He has written widely on the history and politics of sport in South Africa, and was active in the non-racial sports movement, particularly in cricket where he served as an umpire. JOHN NAURIGHT is Senior Lecturer in Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, where he teaches sports history. His interests have concentrated on sport in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and he now directs the Football Studies Centre. He has published on sport and politics, race and culture, and has taken a particular interest in rugby cultures. GREG RYAN is a Lecturer in History at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, where he completed both his MA and PhD. His doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Where the Game Was Played By Decent Chaps: A Social History of New Zealand Cricket, 1832–1914’. He teaches New Zealand and Australian history, and is currently researching issues relating to sport in both countries. The author of several articles, he has also published Forerunners of the All Blacks: The 1888–89 New Zealand Native Football Team in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. KEITH A. P. SANDIFORD is Professor of History at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. His early education was undertaken in Barbados and Jamaica, and his doctoral work at the University of Toronto. The author of several articles on sport, he is a regular contributor to cricket magazines such as Cricket Lore and Journal of the Cricket Society. Among his books are Cricket and the Victorians and The Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados: The Elite Schools, 1865–1966. BRIAN STODDART is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Asia) and Professor of Cultural Studies in RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. From 1995 to 1997 he was the founding Academic Director of that institution’s offshore campus in Penang, Malaysia. From 1981 until 1995 he was at the University of Canberra, Australia, where he was a founding member of the Centre for Sports Studies [ vii ] NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS until his appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Communication in 1991. He has published widely in sports history and sociology, and is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences. Professor Stoddart is also a well-known media commentator on sports issues. [ viii ] Introduction Keith A. P. Sandiford The imperial game analyses the forms and fortunes of cricket as it spread to various segments of the old British empire and beyond. A fascinating story, it illustrates in several surprising ways the complexity of cultural imperialism. Fashions and models are seldom replicated exactly as intended. They are invariably adapted to suit parochial needs and traditions. Thus Barbadian cricket, as Brian Stoddart suggests, bears little resemblance to the Trobriand variety. Sometimes, imperial models carry the defects of the metropolis and these warts also assume peculiarly local characteristics when transplanted. Thus the snobberies which afflicted the game in Victorian England, dividing aristocratic amateur from plebeian professional, reappeared in the racial and ethnic divides bedevilling the sport almost wherever it was taken. These are the basic themes of continuity and disjunction with which this anthology is mainly concerned. The story of imperial cricket is really about the colonial quest for identity in the face of the colonisers’ search for authority. Just as the Victorians felt that participation in the noble sport gave them strength of character and a positive image sadly lacking in foreigners, some colonial communities came to associate cricket with gentility and ‘civilisation’. Indians and Pakistanis, for instance, refused to accept the Christian and other gospels preached by the Anglo-Saxons, but adopted cricket as a peculiar kind of national symbol and dedicated themselves to playing it at least as well as did the imperialists themselves. Blacks (and browns) in the Caribbean, too, attached surrealistic importance to the game and established a cricket cult there that almost defies analysis or logic. Just as excellence in soccer became synonymous with the essence of being Brazilian, cricketing excellence has come to define the modern West Indian. For a long time, too, Australians tried to define themselves in this way and offered astonishingly fierce opposition to the English – not- [ 1 ]
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