Empire Cricket Booklet

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THE 1907 CRICKET TOUR OF ENGLAND

their identity as South Africans was ever ignored in favour of emphasising their Britishness. They were customarily referred to as 'colonials', 'Africans' or 'Afrikanders', but the sense is that the discourse surrounding them was always to emphasise their distance being geographical rather than cultural. What was important to the British press was that above all they should be imperial heroes, and show the best features of the 'British race'. The very nature of the arrival of the South Africans was another means of tying them into being model colonialists. After arriving at Southampton, they proceeded to London for their stay in the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square. It was no coincidence that the team was put up at the Imperial. The Daily Express

fit, otherwise Mr. Bailey will see to it that he does not get there.' 27 Particular attention was paid to the captain of the 'Summerboks', as the South Africans had been dubbed, Percy Sherwell. The Marylebone Times made much of the toughness of Sherwell's childhood, batting on roads using paraffin tins as wickets in Johannesburg, before describing him as 'a clean-made, typical Colonial, with keen blue eyes, and a frank and engaging expression. He is exactly one's conception of what the Briton beyond the seas should be.' 28 Similarly E. H. D. Sewell in C. B. Fry's Magazine, the most popular sporting magazine of the time, and a publication 'infused with muscular Christianity', 29 described him as 'one of nine brothers, and the squarest-chinned, whitest man among hundreds of men in a white man's game'. 3 0 Sewell

A large crowd at Lord's sees C. B. Fry turned chest-on in order to counter the pace of South Africa's opening bowler, J. J. Kotze

noted: 'It was a happy omen for the South Africans that their arrival at their London headquarters, the Imperial Hotel, was on the same day as this brand new hotel, designed by the architect Fitzroy Doll, held its formal opening ceremony. The proprietors made special efforts to complete the hotel in time for the Africans' visit, and so arranged it that the visitors were the first guests to be registered.' 3 2 The building

too concentrated in his profile on the character of the South African team, when he asserted that 'they have, as a body, more of that right type of confidence than any other team that I have ever met'. 31 These examples are typical of the way in which the South African team members were eulogised as good examples of the imperial Briton. This is not to say that