This book explores how cricket in South Africa was shaped by society and society by cricket. It demonstrates the centrality of cricket in the evolving relationship between culture, sport and politics starting with South Africa as the beating heart of the imperial project and ending with the country as an international pariah. The contributors explore the tensions between fragmentation and unity, on and off the pitch, in the context of the racist ideology of empire, its ‘arrested development’ and the reliance of South Africa on a racially based exploitative labour system. This edited collection uncovers the hidden history of cricket, society, and empire in defining a multiplicity of South African identities, and recognises the achievements of forgotten players and their impact.

William Henry ‘Krom’ Hendricks was the first sportsman to be formally barred from representing South Africa on the basis of race. Hailing from Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap, he played in 1892 for the South African Malay team against the touring English, who insisted that he was among the best fast bowlers in the world. This made his exclusion from South Africa’s tour of England in 1894 and subsequent Test series all the more unjust. Ranged against Hendricks were virulent racism and a political alliance between arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, Afrikaner Bond leader J.H. Hofmeyr, and cricket administrator William Milton. Too Black to Wear Whites documents Hendricks’s tireless struggle for recognition and the public contro¬versies around his exclusion. The book shows how Hendricks was further sidelined at senior club level by a cricket establishment determined to save its white players the embarrassment of being shown up by the country’s best fast bowler. Considering his importance in South African sports history, surprisingly little is known about Krom Hendricks. The story of his life is told here for the first time in a fascinating drama that describes the formation of a segregated South Africa through the career of an exceptional cricketer who challenged the boundaries of the system.

This book examines the ways in which cricket has reflected and reproduced some of the social and political tensions of the twenty-first century. Cricket’s struggle for global recognition and the shifting concerns about cricket’s perceived ‘character’ provide two of the most significant meta-narratives to shape the game’s historical and future development. However, in contrast to the degree of continuity these narratives appear to support, the game is currently undergoing a particularly rapid and radical phase of change. This book illustrates some of these dominant processes, that can be broadly categorized as the changing political economy of the game, the nation-specific manifestations of cricket’s political-economic landscape, and the intro- and retrospection within the English game. Cricket is not only thriving across the world, its global spread reveals narratives of migration, national and international politics, astute governance, empowerment of people, and cultural practices of everyday life. New ethical, political, and identity-related concerns have arisen with the reworking of the objectives and methods of playing and watching cricket. The chapters in this volume employ cricket as a useful conceptual tool to analyse the dynamics underwriting interactions between races, sexes, classes, and polities. Cricket in the 21st Century will be a fascinating read for students, scholars as well as general readers with an interest in the sociology and history of sport and global political economy. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

This book considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the English game of cricket, recasting it as a distinctively Samoan pastime, kirikiti. Starting with cricket’s introduction to the islands in 1879, it uses both cricket and kirikiti to trace six decades of contest between and within the categories of ‘colonisers’ and ‘colonised.’ How and why did Samoans adapt and appropriate the imperial game? How did officials, missionaries, colonists, soldiers and those with mixed foreign and Samoan heritage understand and respond to the real and symbolic challenges kirikiti presented? And how did Samoans use both games to navigate foreign colonialism(s)? By investigating these questions, Benjamin Sacks suggests alternative frameworks for conceptualising sporting transfer and adoption, and advances understandings of how power, politics and identity were manifested through sport, in Samoa and across the globe.

'The definitive telling of the life of a West Indian hero' Sir Clive Lloyd The brilliant all-rounder Frank Worrell had to wait until 1960 to become the first permanent Black captain of the West Indies cricket team, denied for a decade by the elitism, insularity and racism of Caribbean cricket’s rulers. When his chance finally came, Worrell transformed a talented but unfocused team into the most exciting side in the world and led his men into unforgettable series against Australia and England. Worrell was universally admired as one of cricket’s great captains when he was knighted in 1964, but three years later, he was dead aged just forty-two. Not merely an extraordinarily talented and record-breaking sportsman, he served the University of the West Indies after his retirement – along with the cricket team and the political federation, one of the three truly unifying elements across a fractious and diverse region. This biography, by the author of the acclaimed Fire in Babylon and with a foreword by Sir Clive Lloyd, is the definitive telling of Frank Worrell's life and legacy. It reveals how an upbringing in Barbados, cricketing adventures around the world and a determination not to be cowed by the powers that ran island cricket, shaped a great West Indian cricketer into a great West Indian, who changed the game forever.

Cecil John Rhodes once said he had only met two creators in South Africa: himself and James Douglas Logan, the Scottish-born founder of Matjiesfontein. Logan immigrated to South Africa in 1877 at the age of nineteen and almost immediately began amassing a fortune through business, politics and his high-profile association with that most favoured of imperial pastimes – cricket. Empire, War & Cricket in South Africa explores in detail how Matjiesfontein was created and how Logan developed this little Karoo town into a renowned health resort, attracting the rich and famous – including South African novelist Olive Schreiner and England cricketer George Lohmann. But, above all, this is the untold story of how James Logan was instrumental in developing the game of cricket in South Africa at a time when the country was heading towards war with the British Empire. In Empire, War & Cricket in South Africa, readers will learn how one of the first international cricket matches between South Africa and England took place at Matjiesfontein; explore the controversial 1901 South African cricket tour to England in the midst of the Anglo-Boer War; read the amazing story of how Logan once had the captain and manager of England’s cricket team arrested as they boarded their ship home; and discover Logan’s close relationship with Rhodes and how their ‘shady dealings’ brought down the premier’s first government. Illustrated throughout with rare photographs and documents, Empire, War & Cricket in South Africa is a unique social and political history of the workings of the British Empire in South Africa during the late nineteenth century; a well-researched and fascinating biography of the man who gave us Matjiesfontein; and an entertaining and at times unbelievable story of cricket’s origins in South Africa.

The institutional relationship between sport and the military appears to be intensifying. In the US for example, which faced global criticism for its foreign policy during the "war on terror," militaristic images are commonplace at sporting events. The growing global phenomenon of conflating sport with war calls for closer analysis. This critical, interdisciplinary and international book seeks to identify intersections of sport and militarism as a means to interrogate, interrupt and intervene on behalf of democratic, peaceful politics. Viewing sport as a crucial site in which militarism is made visible and legitimate, the book explores the connections between sport, the military and the state, and their consequent impact on wider culture. Featuring case studies on sports such as association football, baseball and athletics from countries including the US, UK, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and Japan, each chapter sheds new light on the shifting significance of sport in our society. This book is fascinating reading for all those interested in sport and politics, the sociology of sport, communication studies, the ethics and philosophy of sport, or military sociology.