Re-Colonization
The West Indies team, after a victory against England at Lords, 1950.
http://content.ibnlive.in.com/article/31-Oct-2012world/there-was-a-time-when-poetry-romanced-cricket-303144-2.htm |
Since the British used cricket as a means to establish their hegemony over their colonies, that the game has become such an integral part of the sports cultures of these colonies even after their independence is a matter of concern for some scholars. They wonder if the game is achieving the British objective of having their culture being adopted by the rest of the world.
Cricket was viewed as a ‘gentleman’s game’ by the British. Thus, the introduction to the game to British colonies, where the colonial peoples were openly regarded as uncivilized, was an attempt to establish their inferiority. England used cricket as a means to establish its own hierarchy. This was sometimes even done by using coercive actions. The acceptance of cricket as a major sport in former colonies is an expression of conformity to the British standards of superiority. Thus, cricket is a means of ‘re-colonization’ by the British. The case of West Indies: West Indies is a former British colony. In the nineteenth century, a new mercantile middle class began dominating the West Indian economy. This middle class created exclusive cricket clubs in the country. Although the aim was to create an overarching feeling of unity within the population, the clubs were heavily segregated based in class and race. Thus, far from achieving the objective of making cricket a unifying force, cricket divided the population. Although the case of West Indies is not recent, the idea is that cricket is divisive in terms of race and class. Although everyone plays the game, we rarely see interactions between races or classes. Some scholar’s see this as a case made in favor of ‘re-colonization’, because it achieves the British objective of divide-and-rule. |