This book explores how cricket in South Africa was shaped by society and society by cricket. It demonstrates the centrality of cricket in the evolving relationship between culture, sport and politics starting with South Africa as the beating heart of the imperial project and ending with the country as an international pariah.
The contributors explore the tensions between fragmentation and unity, on and off the pitch, in the context of the racist ideology of empire, its arrested development and the reliance of South Africa on a racially based exploitative labour system. This edited collection uncovers the hidden history of cricket, society, and empire in defining a multiplicity of South African identities, and recognises the achievements of forgotten players and their impact.
Foreword; Andre Odendaal.- PART I: THE LANDSCAPE.- 1. Introduction: Landscape, Players and Politics; Richard Parry, Jon Gemmell and Jonty Winch.- 2. Eclipse of the Summerbok: Percy Sherwell, Paul Roos and the Competition for a National Game for South Africa; Geoffrey Levett.- 3. Not the same thing as on grass: Cultural Pessimism and the Development of South African Cricket, Matting Wickets and the Migration to Turf, 1876-1935; Dale Slater.- PART II: THE PLAYERS.- 4. African Cricket on the Rand: Piet Gwele, Frank Roro and the Shaping of a Community; Richard Parry.- 5. Rhodes, Cricket and the Scholarship Legacy: A Southern African Perspective, 1903-1971; Jonty Winch.- 6. India in the Imagination of Indian South African Cricket, 1910-1971; Goolam Vahed.- 7. Diffusion and Depiction: How Afrikaners came to Play Cricket in Twentieth-Century South Africa; Albert Grundlingh.- 8. The Education of Bruce Mitchell and the Union Babies: History, Accumulationlc
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