Empire & Cricket

Empire and Cricket illuminates the complex relationship between the British Empire and cricket, and in particular in the making of South African society, between 1884 and 1914. This is the gripping story of how cricket lay at the heart of social and political developments in South Africa and the wider Empire, enlivened by numerous historic photographs of players and cricketing sites. The book’s contributors, from the UK, South Africa and Australia, describe how cricket acted as a vehicle for Empire, and explore its impact on race and class. It maps the role of the small and tightly knit white elite with overlapping interests in cricket, politics and business, as well as the largely ignored world of ‘non-white’ (African, coloured and Indian) cricketers and politicians.
The close connection between politics and cricket goes back to the emergence of South Africa as a Test playing country in the late nineteenth century. Cape Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes included cricket in his drive to impose a segregationist structure in the African sub-continent, and together with his acolytes in the Western Province cricket establishment successfully blocked the inclusion of the coloured fast bowler, H. ‘Krom’ Hendricks, in the South African teams of 1894 and 1895. Thereafter segregation was imposed on Cape cricket, effectively ensuring the segregationist future of South African cricket for much of the twentieth century. The feats of those who first placed South African cricket on the international map are recalled, along with those like Hendricks who never had the chance to perform on the international stage. The book explores the widespread enthusiasm for cricket among all of South Africa’s communities, and the passion and success with which blacks played the game.