Cricket in America
Posted on July 1st, 2009
by Freddy Gray |
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Is America slowly becoming a cricket-playing country? This interesting NYT video shows how immigrants from South East Asia have developed cricket leagues in New York. After the surprise success of Netherland, Joseph O’Neill’s award-winning novel about a cricketing subculture in New York, is a pattern emerging? The USA Cricket Association says that cricket is “the fastest growing sport in America.”
Some American conservatives might buckle at reports of this quintessentially limey sport being played on their soil by immigrants from the developing world. I mean, how UnAmerican can you get?
In fact, however, cricket has a long-running and well-established heritage in the land of the free — George Washington is understood to have played some variant of the game. In shedding their British colonial yoke, Americans did not immediately also divest themselves of their interest in cricket. The game was popular in early days of the Republic, and has enjoyed several revivals at various stages American history.
Baseball, obviously, won out in the long run. But the possible (admittedly, still highly unlikely) return of cricket should need not be a cause of right-wing frowning. Cricket is at heart a conservative pastime: it is, in its traditional format, a very slow game, demanding patience and a dispassionate temperament. There is an old theory that cricket is one reason Britain never experienced revolution: the idea being that the village cricket match bound the rural classes together, the butcher could play against the country squire as an equal and so on.
That’s almost certainly rubbish. Perhaps, however, cricket, with its equanimous, soothing charm - its association with a gently declining empire — is just what America now needs. Or is it simply too alien to suit the modern American character?
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So now we have another sport for self-consciously cosmopolitan yuppies to adopt, after soccer has become more associated with Latin immigrant men? Sheesh.
Sorry, goes in the category of bowing to the Queen. My ancestors didn’t shoot at yours so I could do that.
Of course, it’s just a game of leisure and, if anything, conservatives should know that the politicization of everyday life is a sign of Leftist corruption. If we get worked up about that, next we’ll whine about backgammon, cribbage, dominoes, etc.
the last thing we need is more ‘bread and circuses’
it is more symbol of anti-assimilation - because there is no core to assimilate to any longer., thus the NYT enthusiasm for it.
I guess that they don’t play enough cricket in Wales, Ireland and Scotland since there have been longstanding rebellions in those parts of Great Britain. If you add India/Pakistan, South Africa and parts of the West Indies you get the same picture.
Besides, if you really follow cricket, you would know that the game is changing to more rapid and understandable forms such as 20/20 and One Day, versions which have taken over from the the seemingly endless five day Test Match which often ends in no result due to the odd rules.
Also, the US was not included in several world competitions because they can’t decide who the NGO is. I suspect that I won’t be seeing a National Cricket League very soon.
Roger Scruton writes rather eloquently about cricket in England: An Elegy. He writes about the English habit of creating “corporate persons” and the resulting plethora of local civil society organizations:
The 20/20 version has good chances to take hold in the US. It seems to be made for US TV: copious ad breaks, cheer leaders, time frame……
There is an old theory that cricket is one reason Britain never experienced revolution:
Charles I would probably have a different view of that theory.
People from the Indian sub-continent have arrived on our shores in great numbers within the past 20 years. I buy my newspapers and lotto tickets in a shop that has cricket on the TV throughout the day.
This shop also sells bongs, crack pipes, smut, long-distance telephone cards and Slim Jims. The new America in a nutshell.
Steve, Charles I might have a different view of that theory: but he was not King of Great Britain, like Queen Elizabeth II is the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great of Britain today. Charles was King of England, Scotland and Ireland. Britain, as we now know it, did not then exist.
Cricket rocks and it has got nothing to do with the queen.
Cricket is a very interesting and beautiful sport. It is faster and more skillfull now with the invention of the T20 format. It has a huge following in many parts of the World except in USA where it will never catch on.
Felix you are a pedant
The 20/20 game is a heading in the baseball direction…
Cricket is the only sport that solicits and compels conversations among real adults.If you want childish banter then you have look at the rest of sports.
Anthony,
Thanks for illustrating my point about self-conscious urban yuppies.
Who is the Queen ? Is there a Queen in USA ? What is Cricket got to do with this Queen ? How is that in America everything from Jumping, Walking, Dancing, Circus, Throwing, Drinking is called Sport, but the biggest sport in the entire world - Cricket is not called Sport ? Normal activities are being called Sports but Sports are being called Arts ! In America, everything is viewed UpsideDown !