University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood

244 Pages·2018·3.559 MB·English

by  Harry C. R. Bowles

DDAAYYSS IINN
TTHHEE DDIIRRTT
UNIVERSITY
CRICKE T AND
EMERGING
ADULTHOOD
Harry C. R. Bowles
University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood
“University Cricket and Emerging Adulthood provides an e xcellent insight into
the everyday lives of young adults as they attempt to negotiate their way towards,
or transition away from, a career in professional cricket. The book is an impor-
tant read for those seeking to gain a critical understanding, and in-depth exposi-
tion, of identity construction as it relates to the life chances and choices of young
individuals seeking to make sense of their occupational journey. This richly
informative and evocative study translates beyond the realm of sport, offering a
strong conceptual anchoring to the theoretical appreciation of identity work.
Drawing upon a blend of social theory and ethnographic empiricism, in its most
honest form, the book is an indispensable work that uncovers the consequences
of those who are investing their lives into the uncertain and precarious world
that embodies professional sport.”
—Dr Andrew Manley, Lecturer at University of Bath, UK
“This text offers a compelling read and an excellent insight into the world of elite
university cricket and the ‘lifestyle’ it creates for its participants. All ethnogra-
phies are enshrined in time and location—after all, they reflect stories from a
specific time and place—but some present timeless accounts that cross the con-
textual barriers of sport and continue to resonate with the reader long after read-
ing. Whether you are a sociologist, social psychologist, coach or simply a cricket
lover, this book will intrigue and engage you. Throughout, Harry Bowles shines
a warm and empathetic light on the occasionally cold, closeted side of cricketing
life and captures the human side of his participants’ stories, while delivering a
frank dose of realism to those ‘chasing the dream’.”
—Dr Chris Wagstaff, Practitioner Psychologist and Principal Lecturer in
Performance Psychology at University of Portsmouth
Harry C. R. Bowles
University Cricket
and Emerging
Adulthood
“Days in the Dirt”
Harry C. R. Bowles
Cyncoed Campus
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Cardiff, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-76281-4 ISBN 978-3-319-76282-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76282-1
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Foreword
There are many types of studies undertaken by PhD students. Some are
prescriptive and formulaic. Others are more free-form where the student
sets out on a kind of academic expedition largely unaware of where their
intellectual journey will take them. These latter projects are not trying to
prove or disprove anything. Rather, they are personal explorations of the
unique dialectic between researcher and researched and the melee of
activity in between.
It would be fair to say that the period since the 1970s has witnessed the
emergence of a body of knowledge around the social and cultural aspects
of sport whereby qualitative research methods and methodologies have
become a staple in the field. Yet relatively few social researchers have
managed to breach the institutional bounds of elite sport and fewer still
have carried out in-depth qualitative work within cricketing contexts. For
all the modern-day media coverage that it commands, elite sport remains
a heavily guarded affair, particularly in terms of who and what gains
access to its inner sanctums. The truth is, ethnographies of sport are hard
to find—and good ones are even harder. Here we are in luck.
In July 2014 I had the privilege of examining Harry Bowles’ PhD the-
sis—upon which this book is based. I knew from the moment that I
started to read Harry’s work that I was going to find out as much about
him as I was about his research. One of the hallmarks of ethnographic
craft is its deployment of empathy and sensitivity and, as you are about
v
vi Foreword
to discover, this work is replete with both. Seldom have I enjoyed reading
a PhD so much. Rarely have I met a beginning scholar with such an
innate sense of how to make the familiar strange. Indeed, one of the
things that impresses me the most about Harry’s work is his ability to tell
an accessible and engaging story whilst at the same time maintaining the
level of academic rigour expected within the ethnographic tradition.
For anyone even remotely involved with or interested in the inner
workings of elite sport this book is essential reading. It tells of cricket’s
insularity, its folklore, its characters. In so doing, it serves to contextualize
the investigative climate within which the underpinning research was
carried out whilst providing a highly reflexive account of the ethno-
graphic experience itself. It charts the complexities of data collection
(long days in the field, relentless note taking, ‘hanging around’ as the
awkward interloper), the tensions and anxieties of personal interaction,
the significance of researcher integrity. This is ‘real world’ research at its
best.
In turn, of course, we are treated to the detailed nuances of elite sport-
ing life and, more specifically, the experiences of trainee professional
cricketers. Presenting a case-study analysis of one elite cricket academy,
the work utilizes those methods of sociological enquiry traditionally asso-
ciated with ethnography (i.e. participant observation, semi-structured
interviews, and documentary analysis) in order to explore the day-to-day
lives of the young people concerned. The study depicts the way in which
academy recruits are socialized into the culture of professional cricket and
how their career expectations and aspirations are subsequently shaped by
the detailed complexities of institutional experience. At the same time,
the study provides insight into the personal and social lives of trainees.
Notably issues of self and identity emerge in terms of individual experi-
ence and interpretation. Furthermore, the influence of academy officials
is also considered in relation to the pressures, pitfalls and constraints of
trainee development.
What all of this illustrates is that sport does not exist in a social vac-
uum. On the contrary, it is shaped and formed amidst the richness of
broader social life, evolving and developing in accordance with the insti-
tutional practices and popular cultural messages that surround us. In this
sense, this book not only allows readers to reflect upon the ways in which
Forewor d vii
the underpinning principles of social science might challenge the values
and practices of elite sport, but also how they might enhance the way in
which we see the future of sport both in terms of its participatory and
structural formation. I believe that it is by way of such reflection that our
understandings of sport can continue to thrive and that the desire for on-
going scholarship in this area will be stimulated and encouraged. Needless
to say, I trust that this book will act as both a stimulus and an encourage-
ment to all who read it.
University of Gloucestershire, UK Andrew Parker
January 2018
Preface: An Insider to the Context
In his dossier on the practice of social science as an intellectual craft, Mills
(1959, p. 195), as though speaking to his apprentice, writes:
It is best to begin, I think, by reminding you, the beginning student, that
the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have
chosen to join do not split their work from their lives. They seem to take
both too seriously to allow such disassociation, and they want to use each
for the enrichment of the other.
Mills’ account of ‘intellectual craftsmanship’ is one that holds true to his
thesis on the sociological imagination that places self at the centre of a
theory and research epistemology. According to Mills, scholarly craft
concerns more than the application of technical skills, knowledge and
practical wisdom. It involves the sculpting of identity, becoming one’s
work and allowing one’s intellectual curiosity to enter into one’s personal
experiences and vice versa. For Mills, research begins in the biography of
the researcher and develops to coexist and coevolve. This study, like many
others that have gone before it, followed much the same course.
Reflecting on my childhood, it seems strange that I should be writing
the Preface to my first academic publication. At school, I did not display
much of an appetite for academic work. It was on the sports field where
I excelled and I basked in the sense of achievement sport gave me, which
ix
x Preface: An Insider to the Context
I never felt in the classroom. Looking back at some of my formative expe-
riences involving education and sport, I am able to piece together some
of the fragments of my life’s history that connect me to the context and
central themes of this book.
I was eight years old when my father first took me to Lord’s Cricket
Ground to watch England in a Test match. I don’t recall who England
were playing, nor do I remember much about the day’s play. What I do
recollect is sitting there staring at my hands, transfixed by the enormous
pair of wicket keeping gloves he had bought to keep me entertained. It
was a cunning parental ploy and the beginning of our annual pilgrimage
to NW8 that remains to this day like the blood that binds us as father and
son. It was also the start of a relationship with the game that would have
its many highs and lows.
Since then, cricket, in a number of ways, has influenced the decisions
I have made as part of my life’s course. Indeed, this book is the product
of a body of ethnographic research that I completed as a Doctoral student
on the transitional experiences of aspiring professional cricketers. The
fieldwork context is based in one of six university centres of cricket excel-
lence that have been in operation since 2000, and a context that I once
attempted to join as a player and undergraduate student.
I never truly believed that I was good enough to make it as a profes-
sional cricketer, but on choosing to go to university, I thought it would
be good to spend three years training, playing and living under the pre-
tence that I could. Unfortunately, things did not transpire as I had hoped.
Time to move on and redefine myself through my studies—a process that
would eventually give me access to a community of aspiring professional
cricketers I had previously attempted to join, albeit under an entirely dif-
ferent guise.
I must, however, be careful not to discredit the role my cricketing
biography played in the process of gaining entry a second time around.
As I shall explain in introductory chapter of this book, my standing as an
‘insider to the context’ (Dandelion 1997) would prove crucial to the lon-
gevity of my fieldwork, and the richness of data I was able to capture. The
text, whilst grounded in data gathered from October 2010 to June 2013
(although the actual finishing date is hard to pinpoint accurately), is a
revision of the original work that draws upon new professional and
Preface: An Insider to the Conte xt xi
personal experiences, and a more mature understanding of the issues
addressed. It also contains supplementary data derived from follow-up
interviews and the relationships I have maintained with the people at the
centre of the study.
Before moving on to discuss the focus of the research in greater detail,
it is worth touching upon the academic disciplines from which the inves-
tigation draws. The research leans primarily on traditions of sociology
and social-psychology in their various theoretical and empirical forms, as
well as a number of other relevant ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’. Whilst this runs the
risk of frustrating some ‘ologists’ and even ‘osophers’, it may open up the
text to a wider audience and appeal to those interested in other, less con-
ceptual aspects of the work. Qualitative social science is an ever-growing
and diversifying field of inquiry which—despite its disciplinary and
methodological fractures—comes together around the common purpose
of shedding light on personal experience in a detailed, relatable and ethi-
cal way (Young and Atkinson 2012). It is interdisciplinary by nature and
its products should reflect—and be of value to—a broad community of
research and practice.
This work is intended as a piece of conventional ethnographic research.
It is conventional in the sense that I became immersed in the research
context as an active member of the participant group for an extended
period of time. Notwithstanding the inherent complexities of the pro-
cess, like Pryce (1986), the methodological approach was used to get
behind the scenes of cultural practice and obtain an up-close and per-
sonal account of the studied context and its people. Application of tradi-
tional ethnographic techniques such as participant-observation and
unstructured, field-based ‘interviews’ provided the means through which
day-to-day experiences were captured and explored on the pages of my
journal. What is presented, therefore, reflects some of the contextual
responses to real-life situations experienced by the group, mediated
through my interpretation and writing of those events. As both a process
and product of research the ethnography is reflexive and self-aware rather
than apologetic of its realist claims. What I recount as true is as close to
the truth as I could make it—in spite of some inevitable empirical and
editorial stage-management.