Of the global community of cricketers, the West Indians are, arguably, the most well-known and feared. This book shows how this tradition of cricketing excellence and leadership emerged, and how it contributed to the rise of West Indian nationalism and independence.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of the sport - how it developed and spread around the world. The book explores the origins of cricket in the eighteenth century, its establishment as England's national game in the nineteenth, the successful (Caribbean) and unsuccessful (American) diffusion of cricket as part of the development of the British Empire and its role in structuring contemporary identities amongst and between the English, the British and postcolonial communities. Whilst empirically focused on the sport itself, the book addresses broader issues such as social development, imperialism, race, diaspora and national identities. Tracing the beginnings of cricket as a 'folk game' through to the present, it draws together these different strands to examine the meaning and social significance of the modern game. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the role of sport in both colonial and post-colonial periods; the history and peculiarities of English national identity; or simply intrigued by the game and its history.

GLOBALIZATION “Lechner has drawn on his extensive work on, and his deep knowledge of, globalization to write a brief, accessible, and highly successful introduction to the field. The early chapters on food, sport, and mass media should pique the student’s interest and lure them into a deeper involvement with later chapters and the field in general.” George Ritzer, University of Maryland “Frank Lechner’s text takes on key issues in the study of globalization with real clarity and critical power. An authoritative account of the major issues, theories, and debates in the field, aptly illustrated by diverse contemporary examples, this text offers a clear analysis of a complex topic that will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars.” Fran Tonkiss, London School of Economics Written in a lively and accessible style, Globalization: The Making of World Society shows how globalization affects everyday experience, creates new institutions, and presents new challenges. With many examples, Lechner describes how the process unfolds in a wide range of fields, from sports and media to law and religion. While sketching the outlines of a world society in the making, the book also demonstrates that globalization is inherently diverse and contentious. In this concise analysis of a complex subject, Lechner presents some of the best work in the social sciences in clear and readable fashion. Globalization: The Making of World Society will serve as a stimulating, state-of-the-art text for any student of globalization, beginner or advanced.

In this wide-ranging study, Neil Lazarus explores the subject of cultural practice in the modern world system. The book contains individual chapters on a range of topics from modernity, globalization and the 'West', and nationalism and decolonization, to cricket and popular consciousness in the English-speaking Caribbean. Lazarus analyses social movements, ideas and cultural practices that have migrated from the 'First world' to the 'Third world' over the course of the twentieth century. Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World offers an enormously erudite reading of culture and society in today's world and includes extended discussion of the work of such influential writers, critics and activists as Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin, Raymond Williams, Paul Gilroy and Partha Chatterjee. This book is a politically focused, materialist intervention into postcolonial and cultural studies, and constitutes a major reappraisal of the debates on politics and culture in these fields.

Jon Gemmell analyses the relationship between sport and politics through a historical analysis of South African cricket.

This volume covers the "third rising" of West Indies cricket. As the sport becomes ever more commercialized, large amounts of money have established sponsorship & support systems to give cricketers around the world every possible advantage. Beckles assesses what impact the globalization of cricket has had on the cricketers of the Caribbean. He also describes the emergence of what he argues is a debilitating sub-nationalism in the West Indies, & the effect this has had on the game, & the prospect for integrating West Indian nationhood in the twenty-first century.

In his important contribution to the growing field of sports literature, Anthony Bateman traces the relationship between literary representations of cricket and Anglo-British national identity from 1850 to the mid 1980s. Examining newspaper accounts, instructional books, fiction, poetry, and the work of editors, anthologists, and historians, Bateman elaborates the ways in which a long tradition of literary discourse produced cricket's cultural status and meaning. His critique of writing about cricket leads to the rediscovery of little-known texts and the reinterpretation of well-known works by authors as diverse as Neville Cardus, James Joyce, the Great War poets, and C.L.R. James. Beginning with mid-eighteenth century accounts of cricket that provide essential background, Bateman examines the literary evolution of cricket writing against the backdrop of key historical moments such as the Great War, the 1926 General Strike, and the rise of Communism. Several case studies show that cricket simultaneously asserted English ideals and created anxiety about imperialism, while cricket's distinctively colonial aesthetic is highlighted through Bateman's examination of the discourse surrounding colonial cricket tours and cricketers like Prince Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji of India and Sir Learie Constantine of Trinidad. Featuring an extensive bibliography, Bateman's book shows that, while the discourse surrounding cricket was key to its status as a symbol of nation and empire, the embodied practice of the sport served to destabilise its established cultural meaning in the colonial and postcolonial contexts.