Tag: sports: nationalism and commerce

Kerry Packer was an Australian media tycoon who revolutionized cricket in the 1970s by launching World Series Cricket, which introduced colored clothing and night matches.

Cricket boards significantly increased their revenue by selling exclusive television broadcasting rights to media companies, which allowed the sport to reach a massive global audience.

The rich were amateurs for two reasons. One, they considered sport a kind of leisure. To play for the pleasure of playing and not for money was an aristocratic value. Two, there was not enough money in the game for the rich to be interested.

Originally, cricket matches had no time limit. The game went on for as long as it took to bowl out a side twice. Cricket was originally played on country commons, unfenced land that was public property. Cricket’s most important tools are all made of natural, pre-industrial materials. The bat is made of wood as are the stumps and the bails. The ball is made with leather, twine and cork. Even today both bat and ball are handmade, not industrially manufactured. 

The organisation of cricket in England reflected the nature of English society. The rich who could afford to play it for pleasure were called amateurs and the poor who played it for a living were called professionals.  The game was seasonal and did not offer employment the year round. Most professionals worked as miners or in other forms of working class employment in winter, the off-season. 

The Bombay Pentangular was a famous cricket tournament in colonial India played between teams representing different religious and ethnic communities.

Cricket was spread by the British Empire to various colonies, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, and Kenya, becoming popular in all these regions.

Cricket originated in the south-east of England, with early references dating back to the 16th century.

 The first Indian community to start playing the game was the small community of Zoroastrians, the Parsis. The white cricket elite in India offered no help to the enthusiastic Parsis. In fact, there was a quarrel between the Bombay Gymkhana, a whites-only club, and Parsi cricketers over the use of a public park. The Parsis complained that the park was left unfit for cricket because the polo ponies of the Bombay Gymkhana dug up the surface. When it became clear that the colonial authorities were prejudiced in favour of their white compatriots, the Parsis built their own gymkhana to play cricket in.