Empire Cricket Booklet

Forew-ord

ANDRE ODENDAAL

Empire and Cricket is a well-researched book that will fundamentally change the way we view the beginnings of organised cricket in South Africa. The game has one of the largest literatures of any sport, and histories of cricket have tended to reflect in complacent and nostalgic ways the Victorian, colonial and patriarchal values in which it was drenched until recently. The notion of cricket as a 'British' and 'gentleman's' game that has somehow been neutral, 'above politics' and marked by 'fair play' is still widely held, without much critical reflection, in cricket circles. Yet, the game was integrally linked to the spread of British colonialism and social Darwinism at the height of imperial expansion in the mid to late nineteenth century and - in the colonies in particular - it served as a potent symbol of exclusivity and discrimination, shaping patterns of development which continue to influence countries long since independent. Empire and Cricket emphatically demonstrates the above point in the case of South Africa. It does so through the sheer weight of evidence, rather than blunt advocacy, which makes it all the more refreshing. By and large, the people who in this volume permanently take the gloss off the old romantic school's view of history are not so much combative activists but dedicated cricket lovers and researchers, who have for years been trawling through musty newspapers and scorecards from the 1800s. In the process, they contribute significantly to new understandings of the early history of cricket

in South Africa, as well as cricket in the 'Mother Country' and other parts of the globe which were previously painted red. The authors explain at the outset that 'cricketing characters and events had a significant impact on political, social and ideological developments' in South Africa and, indeed, that cricket played a 'central role' in the unfolding historical process in the subcontinent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This is a big claim to make for the role of sport. But, as the contributors proceed to analyse 'the complex relationship between cricket and society' at the time, the reader is forced to concede grudgingly that the proposition is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Cricket and cricketers consistently thread through the narratives of the epoch-shaping political and economic developments that changed the face of South Africa after the discovery of diamonds and gold. The authors demonstrate convincingly: • how the first English tour to South Africa in 1888/89 symbolically promoted the idea of the 'civilising' mission of colonialism; • how cricket and clubs in early Kimberley were central to the social life of the new class of mining capitalists and imperialists, who quickly blocked out possible local competitors; • how cricket mirrored the shift in economic power to Johannesburg after the discovery of gold, and