Or did cricket become a big deal in certain colonies because it was a chance for the colonists to compete with England?

Interesting. My theory can’t do much with that
(but it can’t have much to do with self-confident
cultural elites either)

>a sad ritual in recent years as English cricket
>has flagged and Australia has been dominant.

It seems that’s been going on my whole life – I remember back to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson
in the early Seventies – with only occasional
interruptions (Headingly 1981 shows cricket can
be as exciting as any other sport). But now I
live a mile from Fenway Park, and get my
underdog kicks rooting for the Red Sox against the
Yankees. Plus ca change …

Interesting tidbit for those discussing the relation of colonial national-identity to the development of cricket in British colonies – the first cricket team to tour England from Australia (in 1868) was, famously, all-Aboriginal.

This was a one-off only, though. I can’t think of any Aboriginal players who’ve featured in the Australian test team in the last fifty years.

Australia has struggled to shake off the “cultural cringe” since Federation in 1901, and one of the results of this has been the need to be more British than the British themselves at times.

Our national obsession with beating the (“whinging”) “Poms” at cricket has transformed into a sad ritual in recent years as English cricket has flagged and Australia has been dominant.

The Netherlands (very flat, which is handy).
A bunch of good Danish cricketers too.

My understanding from contemporary accounts is that underarm bowling was much more savage than you’d imagine; hard to believe, though, that it could be as savage as overarm.

Brilliant discussion this.

‘We’ (NZers) imitated what ‘we’ thought the British liked, and would work for ‘us’. I put ‘we’ in quotes because at that time—and until WW2—NZers considered themselves British, who just happened to be living in another part of the world. You can say, if you want, we weren’t imitating at all—it was our culture as well. this was the institutional advantage, perhaps.

I’m guessing the same thing happened in Australia. Basically the settler colonies ran themselves from very, very early on—and even in NZ, the most conservative of settler colonies, this was in the 1850s. There was almost complete autonomy in local affairs by the late 19th century; but very little in relation to external affairs.

I’m not sure how useful it is to talk of political independence at all. I think the problem stems from seeing colonies in the American or indian paradigms, since these presume a separation between the administrators, and the ‘locals’. But in the case of the settler colonies, the administrators were the locals.

It might be better to discuss cultural or local factors. I would say the fact that the settler colonies considered themselves British more than anything else is important explaining the popularity of cricket, and also timing. But even that’s not a full explanation, from my reading of the article I linked to above.

In my view, the really influential factor would
be the presence of administrators and military
officers who had grown up with (post-1864) cricket
in England.
Clearly the Raj was being administered by large
numbers of English-born-and-raised officials
right through to 1948. If those people are also
involved in setting up the local school and
college system, then you can easily see how their
influence becomes self-perpetuating.

As a colony transitions to formal independence,
then certainly you would expect the number of
such colonial officials, and their influence, to
drop considerably. Certainly the declaration of
formal independence doesn’t represent any kind
of bright line for the end of cultural influence,
but I expect you could make the argument in more
detail by looking at the figures for numbers of
immigrants and numbers of colonial administrators
in the various countries. I’d guess that by 1880
(when cricket was really booming – W.G.Grace was
playing, the County Championship started in 1890)
Canada was mostly being run by Canadians rather
than expats ?

At the micro-level, here’s how it works: Henry
Straightbat plays cricket at his English public
school, maybe also at University and/or Sandhurst.
Then goes off to a colony where he runs the civil
or military affairs of a district. Wanting a
pastime for himself and his peers, he decrees
that a cricket pitch will be constructed. As the
local administrator, what he wants he gets, with
no awkwardness about voting or planning permission
He also decrees that each school will have a
cricket pitch. Now ten years later, you have a
country full of cricket pitches and a generation
of young men trained to play the game. From that
point on, cricket has a big institutional
advantage and other sports will find it hard to
get established.

Around the 1880s here in Canada, we had a number of team sports being played in their infant form including hockey, lacorsse, football, cricket, baseball, curling. Early on, there was a national trophy for hockey, lacrosse and football (the Canadian form of which is different from the American form) which would have encouraged more organization of teams. These later emerged into professional leagues and so there was an element of stability brought to the games, although lacrosse has never been a truly well known sport, even after the box form appeared in the 1930s. Baseball, curling and cricket remained firmly in the amateur ranks. Baseball got professionalized but became wrapped up in the gravity well of America. Curling has had perhaps the best ride of it, with nationally televised men’s and women’s championships. It’s still an amateur game although played at the highest levels.

Lord Stanley and the Earl Grey bequeathed trophies to hockey and football respectively. The Stanley Cup and the Grey Cup provided the incentive for competition in a country where getting around is hard work, especially by rail or horse.

All I wanted to say was that people in these settler colonies also had a choice in what games they played, and it wasn’t simply a matter of what was imposed on them.

I thought this was a really interesting essay. http://www.aafla.com/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH1999/JSH2601/jsh2601d.pdf#xml=http://www.aafla.com/search/highlight.gtf?nth=4&handle=000003a9

It’s a history of cricket in canada. Cricket continued in Canada for some time before and after 1880 from the looks of it, although it never became as popular as in Australia or NZ. The Canadians certainly experienced the fully-established form of cricket, but this didn’t mean they were bound to accept it (but would this be because they weren’t independent? Perhaps your theory still works?).

I had a flick through, and it basically said there were a number of reasons why canada failed to adopt cricket: one was because canadians were bad cricketers… (Oh Canada!) and so it wasn’t much fun to watch for Canadians, but there were other reasons, like the choice of sports canadians had, in comparison to say, Australia; local facts like canadian weather (which often ruled cricket out). But the reason Canadians don’t play as much cricket as the other countries isn’t to do with indpendence. Maybe it’s because Canada’s the oldest, and so most ‘advanced’ colony?

I think there’s ammunition here for your arguments though. There’s talk about immigration, elites and so forth.

In any case don’t get me started on underarm bowling—as any Australian or NZer will tell you NZ-Oz relations reached a low point when in 1981, to win a game, the Australian side chose to bowl underarm for the very last ball. We shall never forget!!

My choice of 1880 is not completely arbitrary. I’m
not a historian of cricket, but as far as I know
the rules and institutions of cricket – e.g. the
County Championship, the notion of “first-class”
cricket, and the first great age of cricketing
ehroes (e.g. W.G.Grace, C.B.Fry) all date to the
1880s and 1890s. Before 1880 it was just a game,
not a major institution and cultural phenomenon.

So for those countries which had independence
before 1880, no “rejection” was needed – they
never experienced the fully-established form of
cricket.

but this is nit-picking. I think one thing that’s missing from your theory is any sense of reception: that is, you’re basically assuming that self-government will mean rejection of cricket. But why would it?

You can say that NZ and Australia still thought of themselves as British or part of the British world up till WW2 (at least), which might explain their keenness for cricket. (But what of South Africa? I don’t know enough about it.)

So how about a real simple theory: the countries
which play cricket are those which were ruled
by Britain for some time after 1880 ? Does anyone
have a counter-example to that ?

Now back to attacking the thesis: since the USA
became independent in 1776, and the ascendance
of baseball happened only after 1880, does it
make any sense at all to be talking about
“colonial elites” ? Surely one obvious
explanation is that the places where cricket
thrived were still real colonies ruled from
Britain, whereas the USA was fully independent
and Canada was a self-governing dominion.
I’m a little hazy on the precise timeline of
self-government in Australia, NZ, Canada, any
experts care to comment ?

Another fruitful approach might be to look at
figures for immigration and travel – certainly
there were a lot of Brits going to and from the
Raj in 1880-1930 who could spread cricket – but for the US that was the great time of
non-English immigration, e.g. Irish, German,
Italian.

All in all, trying to to explain this in terms
of sociology rather than economics and history
seems very questionable. If all you have is a
hammer, then everything looks like a nail,
I guess.

Popular: add up the populations of India, SA, Pakistan, Australia, NZ, Windies, England, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh…..don’t know about minesweeper but cricket remains more popular than basketball, American “football” or baseball.

Spectator sport: watch an Aussie one-day or a live match in India or Pakistan rather than the turgid excuse for cricket played by England.

I can happily testify that cricket is impossible to understand unless you’ve actually played it at some point and been on the receiving end of a decent spin ball, been a fielder at silly mid-on or attempted to bowl.

May I suggest Justin, that in the interest of sociological research you give up a day and try play a match? You may even enjoy it :-)