Overview
Cricket is an enduring paradox. On the one hand, it symbolises much that is outmoded: imperialism; a leisured elite; a rural, aristocratic Englishness. On the other, it endures as a global game and does so by skilful adaptation, trading partly on its mythic past and partly on its capacity to repackage itself. This ambitious new history recounts the politics of cricket around the world since the Second World War, examining key cultural and political themes, including decolonisation, racism, gender, globalisation, corruption and commercialisation. Part One looks at the transformation of cricket cultures in the ten territories of the former British Empire in the years immediately after 1945, a time when decolonisation and the search for national identity touched every cricket playing region in the world. Part Two focuses on globalisation and the game’s evolution as an international sport, analysing: social change and the Ashes; the campaigns for new cricket formats; the development of the women’s game; the new breed of coach; the limits to the game’s global expansion; and the rise of India as the world’s leading cricket power. Cricket: A Political History of the Global Game, 1945-2017 is fascinating reading for anybody interested in the contemporary history of sport.
Full Product Details
Author: Stephen Wagg
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Weight: 0.460kg
ISBN: 9781138839854
ISBN 10: 113883985
Pages: 340
Publication Date: 17 November 2017
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Building thoughtfully on the work of the late Mike Marqusee, this is an insightful and richly rewarding labour of love. Astutely structured and deftly researched, the book draws on the author's deep knowledge of geopolitical reality and how it manifests itself in post-Imperial cricket, enabling an ambitious brief to be admirably met. At times, indeed, you wonder how the game has survived the context in which it is played. If you want to know why cricket is the world's most racialized, politicised and fascinating ballgame, look no further. - Rob Steen, Senior Lecturer and award-winning sports journalist, University of Brighton, UK Cricket is one of a few sports where nation vs nation remained a primary contest well into the new millennium. Inexorably tied to a colonial past, cricket also reflected the aspiration of its new nations and nationhoods over the last five decades. In a masterful work of scholarship, Wagg gives us an engaging, comprehensive new history of modern cricket. From the relentless churn of events, achievements and controversies around the cricketing globe, he teases out the sport's engagements with the zeitgeist: the tussle between the old world and the new, the tumult of race and gender, the advent of professionalism , globalisation and the corporatisation of cricket. As much as the book is about modern cricket around the world, Wagg has also skilfully identified the world's footprints on modern cricket. - Sharda Ugra, Senior Editor, ESPNcricinfo and ESPN India The injunction to keep politics out of sport is age-old. Muddle-headed too, as Stephen Wagg's comprehensive comparative history of the politics in cricket demonstrates. This thorough and necessary book should become a standard reference. - Gideon Haigh, Australia's leading cricket writer
Author Information
Stephen Wagg is a professor in the Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University, UK.
