Cricket in Colonial India 1780 û 1947

by Majumdar; Boria

• ISBN13: 9780415400145
• ISBN10: 0415400147
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This work is a social history of Indian cricket between 1780 and 2003. It considers cricket as a derivative sport, creatively and imaginatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs, fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. It is concerned with the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of cricketing ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist ends. In short, it is a story rooted in the contingencies of the colonial and post-colonial context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. Cricket, to put it simply, is much more than a ?game? for Indians. This study describes how the genealogy of their intense engagement with cricket stretches back over a century. It is not a straightforward narrative of Indian cricket, removed from colonial India?s socio-economic and political experience. It is concerned with much more: with the beginning of the end of cricket as a mere sport, with the beginning of Indian cricket?s commercial revolution in the 1930s,with ideals and idealism and their relative unimportance, with the decline of morality for reasons of realpolitik, and with the denunciation, once and for all, of the view that sport and politics do not mix. This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Table of Contents

Royal Cricket: Self, State, Province and Nation	p. 1
Cricket in India: Representative Playing Fields to a Restrictive Preserve	p. 41
Cricket in Colonial Bengal (1880-1947): A Lost History of Nationalism	p. 74
Cricket in Late Colonial Bengal (1930-47): A Story of Decline	p. 105
Cricket in Colonial Bombay: 1850-1940	p. 128
Communalism to Commercialism: The Bombay Pentangular 1892-1946	p. 147
The Vernacular in Sports History	p. 183
Index	p. 191
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.