Cricket & Colonialism: A Tale of Imperial Power & Influence

Cricket today exists as the world’s second-most popular sport across the globe. Originating in England and spreading to the colonies of the British Empire, cricket is now finding a foothold in countries not colonized by the British.

How cricket evolved into an internationally popular sport is directly linked to British colonialism. Cricket was brought to the colonies not just as a pastime for the colonials themselves but as a way to teach British and Victorian virtues to the people who had been colonized. The response and attitudes to the introduction of this sport were varied.

In England, adults have played cricket since around the beginning of the 17th century. It is thought to have derived from lawn bowls with the addition of someone trying to stop the ball from reaching the intended target.

In the 17th century, cricket became a pastime for nobles. During the time following the English Civil War, which ended in 1648, Oliver Cromwell did away with the monarchy and established himself as Lord Protector. He was extremely religious, and it is believed that he banned sports that were too raucous or interfered with observing the Sabbath.

As Sundays were the only days the working classes had off, they did not have time to play cricket. The nobility, however, had plenty of time during the week for such activities, and cricket became a favored sport, especially in the schools where wealthy people sent their sons.

By the end of the century, cricket attracted a huge number of gamblers who risked fortunes on the outcomes. It is believed that county cricket was created by gamblers forming their own teams in a bid to strengthen their bets.

It was likely introduced to Ireland around this time. It is believed that it was adopted by Irish soldiers serving in the British army, and it is also theorized that the rules of cricket were subject to additions from the Irish sport of catty. Before cricket became widely popular in Ireland, however, it was played in England’s North American colonies.

England’s overseas colonial empire began in the 16th century with colonies in the West Indies and North America. There were no official rules at this time, and the game was played intermittently as a way to pass the time, although it is difficult to say how often cricket was actually played.

Cricket’s growth in popularity within the English (and later British) Empire was mirrored in the colonies, even as Britain and the North American colonies went to war. In the winter of 1777 to 1778, it was reported that George Washington played cricket with his troops while camped in Valley Forge.

The anti-British sentiment, however, would spell doom for the game of cricket in the United States. Although it hung on and was even popular in many places, it was baseball that became the most popular sport by the end of the 19th century.

A little-known fact is that the first international cricket match was played in 1844 between the United States and Canada. Canada won by 23 runs.

Around this time, cricket was also introduced to India, where the first cricket club was established in 1792. In these early days, cricket was played by the colonists and had yet to be picked up by local populations. The latter half of the 19th century would be when the game took off in this direction. The first Indian community-based cricket club is believed to have been the Oriental Cricket Club, formed by Parsis in 1848. Although this club did not last very long, it provided a catalyst for other Indian clubs to be created, and the game started to become widely popular wherever it was introduced.

The first mention of cricket in the West Indies dates back to 1806, and like in India, cricket was played mainly by military officers and colonial administrators. In the West Indies, slavery would be a factor in the development of the sport in the early years. In these early years, enslaved people were tasked with setting up the wicket and were used as extra fielders and sometimes as bowlers when there weren’t enough colonists to play.

Enslaved people were generally encouraged to adopt the practices of their colonial overlords. This state of affairs would not last long, however, as Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and put an end to slavery completely on August 1, 1834 with the abolition of slavery in Britain and all its colonies. This law was vigorously followed by the British military, which eagerly went to war with enslavers to spread abolition to all colonial powers.

Despite an end to slavery, there was still widespread segregation. Throughout the 19th century, cricket clubs in the West Indies were characterized by being for “whites” or “Blacks,” with a few exceptions here and there. Eventually, by the end of the 19th century, integrated teams were common, as were inter-island matches.

One of the powerhouses in world cricket today, Australia was an obvious place for cricket to become popular. Australia had the added feature of having weather conducive to playing the game. The first record of cricket being played in Australia dates back to 1804, but it likely started before that. By 1826, clubs were being formed in Sydney, and the game was being played at a more organized level.

The popularity of the sport spread to other regions of the colony. By 1832, clubs had been formed in Tasmania, and by 1835, cricket was being played in Western Australia as well. By the 1840s, cricket had spread to virtually all corners of Australia.

At this point, it was clear that administration boards were necessary in order to standardize the game in all the states and territories of the Australian colony, and the next few decades saw the establishment of such bodies to represent cricket in an official capacity.

In 1868, the first organized sporting team left Australia to play a tour in England. The most noticeable aspect of this team is that it was an Aboriginal team. Natives of Australia were subject to the most appalling racism at the hands of the Australian colonists. For many, this tour was treated as a circus act with the promise of financial reward.

While on tour, the team also showcased their traditional activities, such as spear-throwing. The spectacles were well-attended but drew a mixed reaction from the British public. For the most part, the games were popular for their novelty value. Upon their return to Australia, further tours were made impossible by legal acts which forced Native Australians to live on reserves.

The following decade would see tours by the English to Australia and vice versa. In 1882, a victory by the Australian team over the English led to a satirical obituary in the Sporting Times in which it was described that English cricket had died, the body cremated, and the ashes taken back to Australia. Since then, the Australian and English Cricket teams have toured each other’s countries, playing a series of test matches known as the “Ashes,” which has become the most famous traditional cricket tour conducted every year.

The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were considered the golden age for Australian cricket, although recent decades have produced an incredible record of six World Cup final wins from the Australian cricket team.

In the late 19th century, New Zealand also became a notable power in world cricket. The game took off in New Zealand around a decade after it became popular in Australia. The first written evidence of cricket being played in New Zealand comes from 1832 with a diary entry by Reverend Henry Williams, who noted the game being played by boys on a beach. A few years later, Charles Darwin mentioned formerly enslaved Māori playing cricket with missionaries.

By the end of the 19th century, New Zealand had its own national team, which played many games against Australia. The two countries would continue to develop a healthy rivalry, conveniently helped by the two country’s geographical proximity to each other.

In virtually all other territories within the British Empire, cricket became popular. It was certainly being played in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), while the first mention of it comes from a Colombo Journal article from 1832, the same year in which the Colombo Cricket Club was formed. In 1882, the first international tour happened when the English team, en route to recover “the Ashes” from Australia, included Sri Lanka on their tour. Another English team and an Australian team followed suit in the years that followed, and the first Indian team to tour Sri Lanka did so in 1903.

In South Africa, cricket followed a similar story as in other colonies. It was played in the early 19th century and became a dominant sport by the 1880s. Cricket in South Africa is believed to have been introduced after 1795 when the British seized Cape Town from the Dutch Batavian Republic, a subject of France with whom Britain was at war. British occupying troops likely were the first to play cricket on African soil during this period.

Although cricket was considered a “white man’s” pastime, there were mentions of the game being played by “Hottentots” and “Bantus,” although there is very little in the way of these events being recorded.

For the most part, cricket was an obsession of the military, and there were even complaints of British officers taking up valuable logistics space by bringing their cricket gear on military campaigns. One such complaint was received just before the Battle of Isandlwana, where the British suffered their biggest-ever defeat to indigenous forces.

The first club formed was in Port Elizabeth in 1843 and then in Cape Town in 1844. Games were played sporadically but became immensely popular in schools in the Cape Colony. By the 1860s, games were being played in the neighboring Transvaal, which was not under British control at the time but rather under the control of the Boers, who were descended mainly from Dutch settlers. English immigrants to the Boer republics, however, took their culture with them, which included cricket.

In 1888, Cape Town hosted the first touring English team, and in the following year, first-class domestic cricket became official as provincial teams toured and played against each other. In 1894, the first South African team toured England.

The first half of the 20th century saw a huge growth in cricket as a professional sport in many of the empire’s colonies. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and other colonies all experienced a cricketing boom. In India, the sport, once associated with colonial masters, became a pastime for everybody who wanted to play, and informal games were set up as a default sport in much the same way as soccer is done in most countries around the world.

Despite interruptions from two world wars, cricket continued to reach new heights as transport technology made it far easier for cricketing nations to tour other countries, thus creating a truly international scene of competitiveness.

When India was granted independence in 1947, Pakistan was also created as a result, and a fierce rivalry began between the two countries in many areas, including cricket. In 1971, what was known as East Pakistan became the independent nation of Bangladesh, splitting from India and thus forming its own cricket board.

In South Africa, segregation and apartheid laws informed how cricket was played in the country. South Africa became a union in 1910, earning a significant semblance of independence from Great Britain. In 1934, it became a sovereign state, and in 1961, South Africa became a republic, declaring full independence. Despite independence from Britain, white people inherited colonial attitudes, and with a majority Black population, these attitudes were brought to the fore, leaving a dangerous and lasting legacy in the form of apartheid, which extended into the realm of sport.

South Africa was a pariah state and was not allowed to play international sport, yet despite this, there were instances where foreign teams toured. In the realm of cricket, whites and people of color had separate leagues, and non-whites were forbidden from participating in cricket at the highest level. Nevertheless, cricket had a robust following among people of color despite the sport’s origins, and some non-white players became internationally famous.

One such man was Basil d’Oliveira, who played cricket for the English national team, which toured South Africa. His inclusion in the English squad caused a great deal of consternation in the South African media as well as society and government, which was forced to confront its own racism.

In the early 1990s, apartheid policies were abandoned and completely eradicated by 1994. Great strides were made thereafter to integrate different ethnic groups into the national squad, and today, the Proteas are arguably the most racially diverse team in world cricket.

In other African countries, the game took hold, too, and it became widely popular in places such as Zimbabwe and Kenya, despite these countries’ histories with their former colonial oppressors.

Once confined to the English and the English colonizers, cricket has escaped its bounds and found a home far beyond the conservative ideals to which it could have been consigned. Not simply a game played by countries that Britain colonized, the game has taken root in countries not generally associated with the British Empire and its successor, the Commonwealth. Of particular note are Afghanistan and the Netherlands, which are among the top ten cricketing nations in the world today.

In recent history, the popularity of different versions of the game has taken hold. One-Day-Internationals and T20 cricket have given the sport a shorter, more exciting format and have attracted vast numbers of new fans and adherents to the sport. Currently, the outlook for cricket is extremely positive.

Cricket, once seen as a pastime for the colonizers, changed dramatically over the course of the centuries. It was quickly picked up by local populations who transcended the colonial stereotypes of the game and claimed it as their own. As Ashis Nandy, an Indian Psychologist and academic, once put it, “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally invented by the English.”

Today, cricket is a great unifying force that brings cricket-playing nations together in a spirit of camaraderie and respect. The attitudes eschewed by cricket players today move in a completely different direction from the general attitudes of the colonizers who played the game over 200 years ago.

In recent years, colonialism and its history have been subjected to a huge assault as modern society attempts to balance the scales of an unjust past. Cricket could be lumped together with other colonial mores and discredited as a weapon of colonizers, but the sport seems to have escaped this dynamic. It is loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and it is easily one of the fastest-growing sports across the globe today.