Overview

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.

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9783030272708

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Reviews

As a first comprehensive text on the history of kirikiti in Samoa, Sacks provides extensive references, glossaries, and very useful appendices referencing foreign and Samoan terms, which help guide the reader throughout. Sacks' ongoing interrogation and weaving of a complex landscape has resulted in a thoughtful reading of kirikiti over five decades. (Safua Akeli Amaama, The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 56 (4), 2021)

Author Information

Benjamin Sacks is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.

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