Cricket's Changing Ethos by Jon Gemmell

Author:Jon Gemmell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Conclusion

Once established, the role of cricket in shaping national identities is an obvious one. International sides allow for the prominent display of the symbols and the sounds of the nation-state. In some cases, sport assists in the manufacture of these states, becoming a national entity before they are. This is an effect of identity being created out of an antipathy to what already existed. The Australian, West Indian, and Pakistani wanted to infuse cricket with a separate set of values not because it would be a novel thing to do, but because they rejected the code of values that was already familiar with the sport. They wanted to play the game in a different way, to provide its essence with something unique, something that reflected changing political, cultural, and even geographical ideas.

Those who yearned to provide the sport with a different moral code and an alternative way of playing the game were ultimately embroiled in a political challenge to the status quo. For the Irish and the American, cricket was so wrapped up in colonialism that it was rejected for something more akin to national culture . For the nationalist movements in India , South Africa, and the Caribbean, however, cricket afforded the opportunity to inflict injury on English prestige, and then to directly challenge it through the installation of national, as distinct to alien, codes of values.

On independence, these oppositional forces became the authority and were mandated to reinforce identity , and more importantly to provide recognition and prestige to the nation-state. Sport provides the opportunity for the developing world to compete with the Western countries, where politics and economic strength do not. This has the consequence, however, of sport assuming such an importance to the national idea that it becomes the plaything of political authorities, and so nationalism moves from being an opposition to alien norms and values , to an authority that regulates rather than just influences cultural phenomena. At worse nationalism can play on the worst aspects of patriotism, reinforce stereotypes and create tensions, often in the interest of commercial concerns.

Finally, the re-establishing of norms and values into a new distinct ethos ensures that cricket survives and maintains its nuisances and idiosyncrasies in many ways that ultimately enrich the sport. That these factors are determined by the wider social environment in which they are created by dominant political and economic forces is as relevant to post-colonial society as it was under the colonial project. The privileged position of English cricket would survive the early thrust for national self-determination . By 1993, for example, England (and Australia ) could still veto proposals of the International Cricket Council (ICC) , through the MCC it nominated the chairman of the ICC and provided both the administration and the headquarters of cricket’s ruling body. This allowed England a greater say in the government of cricket than any of its rivals. The end of cricket’s latest chapter and the reshaping of what was meant by the spirit of the game would be made alongside the replacement of England as the dominant power .

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