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For cricket enthusiasts there is nothing to match the meaningful contests and excitement generated by the game’s subtle shifts in play. Conversely huge swathes of the world’s population find cricket the most obscure and bafflingly impenetrable of sports. The Changing Face of Cricket attempts to account for this paradox.

The Changing Face of Cricket provides an overview of the various ways in which social scientists have analyzed the game’s cultural impact. The book’s international analysis encompasses Australia, the Caribbean, England, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. Its interdisciplinary approach allies anthropology, history, literary criticism, political studies and sociology with contributions from cricket administrators and journalists. The collection addresses historical and contemporary issues such as gender equality, global sports development, the impact of cricket mega-events, and the growing influence of commercial and television interests culminating in the Twenty20 revolution.

Whether one loves or hates the game, understands what turns square legs into fine legs, or how mid-offs become silly, The Changing Face of Cricket will enlighten the reader on the game’s cultural contours and social impact and prove to be the essential reader in cricket studies.

This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

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Lost Histories of Indian Cricket studies the personalities and controversies that have shaped Indian cricket over the years and brings to life the intensity surrounding India's national game.
It may be true that that cricket today arouses more passions in India than in any other cricket playing country in the world. Yet, when it comes to writing on the history of the game, Indians have been reticent and much of the past has been obscured and lost. Majumdar here recovers this history and restores it to its rightful place in India's rich sporting heritage. ... Read more

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Of the global community of cricketers, the West Indians are, arguably, the most well-known and feared. This book shows how this tradition of cricketing excellence and leadership emerged, and how it contributed to the rise of West Indian nationalism and independence. The essayists argue that cricket mirrors the anti-colonial tensions and ideological and social conflicts over race and class that have shaped West Indian society. In consequence, it has helped promote the region's democratic ethos and fragmented nationalism. "Liberation Cricket" connects and embraces the diversity of West Indian social and political life, and suggests the relevance of cricket research for an understanding of the making of the modern West Indies. ... Read more

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This is an exacting social history of Indian cricket between 1780 and 1947. It considers cricket as a derivative sport, creatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs, fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations.  Majumdar argues that cricket was a means to cross class barriers and had a healthy following even outside the aristocracy and upper middle classes well over a century ago. Indeed, in some ways, the democratization of the sport anticipated the democratization of the Indian polity itself.

Boria Majumdar reveals the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of cricketing ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist ends. He exposes a sport 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 concerned not only with the game but also with the end of cricket as a mere sport, with 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 the International Journal of the History of Sport 

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Did Baseball Evolve from Cricket?
"The Creation of American Team Sports," a volume in the "Sport and Society" series of the University of Illinois Press, is an outstanding contribution to the emerging specialty of sports history. George B. Kirsch, professor of history at Manhattan College, offers a fascinating glimpse into the development of both baseball and cricket as important team sports in the mid-nineteenth century.

Kirsch describes baseball's movement from amateur to professional status after the Civil War, as well as providing an analysis of why the sport was so popular and how it eventually eclipsed cricket as a sport. In the process, he offers considerable insight into the nature of these two sports, who played them, the demographics of supporters, geographical strongholds such as Brooklyn (no wonder the Dodgers were one of the most beloved of professional baseball clubs and the most missed when they moved to Los Angeles), and the nature of clubs.

Kirsch concentrates on the well-organized amateur clubs, finding that they were more than groups of loosely-organized men who played the games. They were voluntary associations with organization and structure and dedicated to specific ideals. They held meetings beyond practices and games, and for many the club became the center of social life. They were dedicated to physical fitness and sold their sports to the greater society on that basis, but were also involved in other activities. Kirsch also documents that most of the members of the various clubs in the early era were at least in the middle classes with sufficient time and money to contribute to the sport. It was not until it was commercialized that baseball became the sport of the masses, and cricket never did so.

Baseball also cut across racial lines, there were black clubs, but these were also largely made up of members who were somewhat better off financially than average members of the race. The author also documents, and it is no surprise, that the cricket clubs had a much higher proportion of foreign born members, especially Englishmen, than did the baseball clubs. Indeed, Kirsch makes the argument that cricket's demise was tied to feelings of nationalism. Although he does not hold to the theory that cricket died out immediately after the Civil War, it was a decided backwater that did not have the enthusiasm surrounding it that baseball enjoyed. Cricket was popular among eastern elites until World War I when, Kirsch writes, "Country clubs adopted new British sports such as tennis and golf, which became more popular then cricket because of their greater appeal to participants and spectators" (p. 264).

One of the most interesting aspects of "The Creation of American Team Sports" the transition of baseball from an amateur, participatory sport to one that was professional and oriented toward spectators. The commercialization of baseball was caught up in the urbanization of America that took place in the Gilded Age. It was, perhaps, a logical outgrowth of the rising economic status of American workers, the increased amount of leisure time, and the rampant nationalism that celebrated the sport as the epitome of all that was virtuous in the nation. It was also a team sport, representative of the whole of the nation, with a decidedly individualistic aspect, in recognition of each person's uniqueness. Kirsch fully explains the many fits and starts of baseball's commercialization, highlighting difficulties with gambling, drunkenness, and other vices.

In all, Kirsch has produced a fine book that will be permanently useful to scholars, analyzing in one volume the personalities and core themes of the development of American baseball and its rivalry with cricket. An important addition to the scholarship of the American nineteenth century society, it will be a standard work for years. ... Read more

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The Politics of South African Cricket analyses the relationship between politics and sport, in particular cricket, in South Africa. South African Cricket embraces an ethos that is symbolic of a wider held belief system and as such has distinctive political connotations in the region.
Sport in South Africa is certainly influenced by forces beyond the playing field, but politics too can be influenced by the social and economic force of sport.
Focusing on the sports boycott as a political strategy, Jon Gemmell analyses the relationship between sport and politics through a historical analysis of South African cricket. He employs case studies to explore the relationship between politics and South African cricket and argues convincingly that cricket assisted the reform process by undermining the legitimacy of the apartheid regime. ... Read more

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Cricket has been subject to a number of changes over the last twenty years. We can no longer talk of a sport particular to an out-dated English way of life. Cricket has become global and has to exist within the global environment. Primarily the world game has become commercialised. This collection of essays assesses the developments within major playing nations between the World Cups. Do we now live in a world where commercialism is the primary factor in determining sports, or are wider historical prejudices still evident? Seeking to answer these questions, Cricket, Race & the 2007 World Cup focuses on racial and ethnic tensions and their place in the new globalized, cricketing environment.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

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Full of stories, observations, jokes and whimsy, Guardian cricket writer Booth offers an original and engaging journey around the curious world of cricket examining the nations who spend vast chunks of their time fretting over the fate of a small red ball. ... Read more

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Cricketers have discovered the benefit of their game of improved fitness and conditioning. From general to position specific training, and conditioning drills for batting, bowling, fielding and wicket keeping, this book answers all demands. ... Read more

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MY SPIN ON CRICKET tells the story of the great game through the ages, through personal anecdotes and a lively, well informed narrative by Richie Benaud, the popular cricket commentator and former Australian cricket captain. Hailed as one of the most influential cricketer and cricket personalities of the last fifty years, he was the runaway winner in The Wisden Cricketer's commentators' poll of 2005. With the emphasis on the modern game, Richie puts current events under the spotlight and relates them to the past. He discusses all aspects of the game, including gambling, sledging, leadership and technological development in this entertaining and highly informative book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ritchie is the best
One of the best cricketers of all time--best sportsman of his time.And a wonderful and compassionate gentleman.I just love his book.

A must for every cricketer and fan alike

My best to him

Ashwani Sharma ... Read more

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Gideon Haigh's new book covers all the great figures and major issues of cricket, by collecting all his best writing about the game. There are profiles of players past and present - Bradman, Ranjitsinhji, Benaud and Sobers from the past, Steve Waugh, Shane Warne and Wasim Akram from the present. He covers the big issues in the game: sledging, match-fixing, Kerry Packer, Zimbabwe, umpiring. He writes about cricket's best writers - Swanton, C.L.R. James - and ponders the game's most halcyon and unique aspects: slow bowling, captaincy, the essence of good batting. Haigh has now established himself as one of the finest writers on the game - author of one acknowledged masterpiece, Mystery Spinner, a comic classic, Many a Slip - and one of its most most shrewd commentators, who gets widely reviewed both by the cricket media and the national press. This book is likely to attract the same attention. ... Read more

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Learn about the history of crickets greatest contest, The Ashes with iMinds insightful knowledge series.

The Ashes is a test-cricket series played between England and Australia. Throughout its long history, winning the Ashes has been seen as a matter of national pride for the two sporting rivals. Today, there is an Ashes series in both men’s cricket and women’s cricket. But the Men’s Ashes series is more widely known.
Any knowledge of the Ashes requires knowledge about the sport of cricket. Cricket is played between two teams of eleven players. They play on a field that has a pitch in the middle. On the pitch there are two wickets which are 22 yards apart. One team bats and has a team member standing in front of each wicket. The other team bowls and fields.

iMinds brings targeted knowledge to your eReading device with short information segmentsto whet your mental appetite and broaden your mind. ... Read more

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Sir Donald Bradman is widely considered to be the greatest batsman who has ever lived. In 1930 he arrived in England, a callow youth whose lack of technique, or so the English thought, would be mercilessly exposed. By summer's end he had redefined the possibilities of the game and changed it forever. This fascinating book reconstructs that Australian tour from the first day to the last, in the most lively detail, including every run in Bradman's legendary 300 scored in one day during the Leeds Test. This is a must for every cricket lover. Using a host of contemporary sources - from regional Australian newspapers and original score sheets, to English provincial and national newspapers and players' memories - Christopher Hilton brings all aspects of the 1930 summer tour vividly to life. He revisits every controversy surrounding one of the sport's most momentous occasions in a way that will bring great enjoyment and a sense of history to readers young and old. Christopher Hilton worked for national newspapers, notably the Daily Express, for 25 years. He has since written more than sixty books on a variety of sports as well as history and politics. This is his third cricket book.Married with a daughter, he lives in Hertfordshire. ... Read more