The Bowling Was Superfine

A multi-faceted portrait of the significance of cricket to the Caribbean, 'The Bowling Was Superfine' is a homage to the game that has been transformed from a colonial sport into a source of Caribbean nationalism.

This book analyses cricket’s place in Anglophone Caribbean literature. It examines works by canonical authors – Brathwaite, Lamming, Lovelace, Naipaul, Phillips and Selvon – and by understudied writers – including Agard, Fergus, John, Keens-Douglas, Khan and Markham. It tackles short stories, novels, poetry, drama and film from the Caribbean and its diaspora. Its literary readings are couched in the history of Caribbean cricket and studies by Hilary Beckles and Gordon Rohlehr. C.L.R James’ foundational Beyond a Boundary provides its theoretical grounding. Literary depictions of iconic West Indies players – including Constantine, Headley, Worrell, Walcott, Sobers, Richards, and Lara – feature throughout. The discussion focuses on masculinity, heroism, father-son dynamics, physical performativity and aesthetic style. Attention is also paid to mother-daughter relations and female engagement with cricket, with examples from Anim-Addo, Breeze, Wynter and others. Cricket holds a prominent place in the history, culture, politics and popular imaginary of the Caribbean. This book demonstrates that it also holds a significant and complicated place in Anglophone Caribbean literature.

The struggle for status within sport is a microcosm of the struggle for rights, freedom and recognition within society. Injustices within sport often reflect larger injustices in society as a whole. In South Africa, for example, sport has been crucial in advancing the rights and liberty of oppressed groups. The geographical and chronological range of the essays in Ethnicity, Sport, Identity reveal the global role of sport in this advance. The collection examines cases of discrimination directed at individuals or groups, resulting in their exclusion from full participation in sport and their consequent struggle for inclusion. It shows how ethnic and national identity are sources of social cohesion and political assertion within sport, and it illustrates the manner in which sport has served to project ethnicity in various, often contradictory ways. It depicts sport as an agent of conservatism and radicalism, superiority and subordination, confidence and lack of confidence, and as a source of disenfranchisement and enfranchisement. That sport has been, and continues to be, a potent means of both ethnic restriction and release can no longer be ignored.

For cricket enthusiasts there is nothing to match the meaningful contests and excitement generated by the game’s subtle shifts in play. Conversely, huge swathes of the world’s population find cricket the most obscure and bafflingly impenetrable of sports. The Changing Face of Cricket attempts to account for this paradox. The Changing Face of Cricket provides an overview of the various ways in which social scientists have analyzed the game’s cultural impact. The book’s international analysis encompasses Australia, the Caribbean, England, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. Its interdisciplinary approach allies anthropology, history, literary criticism, political studies and sociology with contributions from cricket administrators and journalists. The collection addresses historical and contemporary issues such as gender equality, global sports development, the impact of cricket mega-events, and the growing influence of commercial and television interests culminating in the Twenty20 revolution. Whether one loves or hates the game, understands what turns square legs into fine legs, or how mid-offs become silly, The Changing Face of Cricket will enlighten the reader on the game’s cultural contours and social impact and prove to be the essential reader in cricket studies. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Perfect for fans and scholars alike, this Companion explores cricket's origins, global reach, iconic personalities and enduring popularity.

Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014 Spectator sport is living, breathing, non-stop theatre for all. Focusing on spectator sports and their accompanying issues, tracing their origins, evolution and impact, inside the lines and beyond the boundary, this book offers a thematic history of professional sport and the ingredients that magnetise millions around the globe. It tells the stories that matter: from the gladiators of Rome to the runners of Rift Valley via the innovator-missionaries of Rugby School; from multi-faceted British exports to the Americanisation of professionalism and the Indianisation of cricket. Rob Steen traces the development of these sports which captivate the turnstile millions and the mouse-clicking masses, addressing their key themes and commonalities, from creation myths to match fixing via race, politics, sexuality and internationalism. Insightful and revelatory, this is an entertaining exploration of spectator sports' intrinsic place in culture and how sport imitates life – and life imitates sport.

London's histories of migration and settlement and the resulting diverse, hybrid communities have engendered new forms of social and cultural activity reflected in a wealth of novels, poems, films and songs. Postcolonial London explores the imaginative transformation of the city by African, Asian, Caribbean and South Pacific writers since the 1950s. John McLeod engages freshly with the work of both well-known and emergent writers, including Sam Selvon, Doris Lessing, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Colin MacInnes, Bernardine Evaristo, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fred D'Aguiar. In reading a select body of writing in its social contexts and exploring contrasting attitudes to London's diasporic transformation, he traces an exciting history of resistance to the prejudice and racism that have at least in part characterised the postcolonial city. Rewritings of London, he argues, bear witness to the determination, imagination and creativity of the city's migrants and their descendants. This is a superb study of the ways in which 'imperial centre' might be rewritten as postcolonial metropolis. It represents essential reading for those interested in British or postcolonial literature, or in theorisations of the city and metropolitan culture.