Cricket and the Fight Against Imperialism

Orlando Patterson and Jason Kaufman write in the The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Bowling for Democracy (from a forthcoming piece in The American Sociological Review on the puzzle of why cricket is a big sport in Britain and some parts of the former British Empire, but not in either Canada or the U.S. "The puzzle only deepens when one considers that cricket was once popular in both Canada and the United States. It rivaled baseball for most of the 19th century, with as many stories in the sports pages of The New York Times until 1880. Indeed, the world's first international test match was played between Canada and the United States in 1844. So the puzzle is not so much why it was never adopted in North America, but why in the early 20th century it was subsequently rejected."

They discuss factors like climate, playing space and duration of games but focus on cricket's role in affirming a native elite as opposed to egalitarian games like baseball. They also mention the role of nationalism--the former colony defeating the mother country.

Sport is an interesting subject. As a "meme", it's clear and identifiable. Does it spread more through grassroots activity, or from the top down? Is the spread a matter of evolution in the biological sense or competition in the economic? What about the linkage between sport and religion?

The big three U.S. sports seem to have spread at the grassroots, though basketball and college football had strong connections with the Protestant elite (basketball was born in a YMCA). Perhaps because sport and entertainment are meritocratic endeavors, meaning money rules, both have been routes for mobility. Boxing was big for a long time (anyone remember the Friday night fights on TV), often as a route for upward mobility by various minorities. If boxing were still big, we'd be seeing more Hispanic-American boxers than we do. Similarly track and field have lost mind share. Now corporations want to promote sports, exploiting Tiger Woods and Mia Hamm, pumping the Triple Crown races, and sponsoring every square inch of NASCAR races.

U.S. sport seems less nationalistic than (say) soccer, although the Olympics succeed in rousing our interest. Losing the basketball gold medal the first time hurt, but it wasn't that big a deal the last time. Still, I think the post-war Olympics were more nationalistic than recent events, perhaps because it was viewed as a proxy for war. Doing well at the Olympics meant demonstrating the superiority of one's social system; that was the myth that all, from Hitler to the East Germans to Soviets to Chinese bought into and we weren't far behind. It touches on the area that William James called the "moral equivalent of war". Try reading his piece. It seems to me like another time, at least if I forget the few months after 9-11.