On Tuesday, Canada played its first match in one of the world’s major sporting
competitions, the cricket World Cup in Southern Africa
Peter Henshaw14-Feb-2003On Tuesday, Canada played its first match in one of the world’s major sporting
competitions, the cricket World Cup in Southern Africa. Canada is one of
fourteen countries playing in a five-week tournament that will be watched by
hundreds of millions of people stretched all around the globe. Yet probably
more Kenyans than Canadians will know how Canada’s cricketers fared
yesterday. That’s because the cricket World Cup has throngs of avid followers
in nearly every participating country except Canada.In popular Canadian perception, cricket is still seen as the preserve of
English gentlemen in white flannels, playing leisurely games that stretch on
for days, enlivened principally by breaks for tea and cucumber sandwiches.
Most of the mainstream Canadian media, in common with most Canadians, behave
as if cricket is no more than a tired relic of the British empire, which not
even the British take terribly seriously any more – rather like the monarchy.Relic of empire cricket may well be. It spread by means of globe-spanning
human and cultural networks which for much of the 19th and 20th centuries
formally linked one third of the world’s population across one third of its
surface. A century ago, cricket was played principally by the British (and
above all the English – a key distinction) who governed, soldiered or settled
the overseas colonies.Cricket even flourished for a time in Canada. In the first ever international
cricket match, Canada played the United States in New York in 1844. But apart
from some spasmodic revivals in the 20th century, Canadian cricket was
subsequently overwhelmed by baseball – backed as it was by the American
cultural and media juggernaut.By contrast, cricket established itself as a predominant spectator sport in
the other settler dominions of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa,
still amongst the world’s top cricketing nations. Ironically, it is England
whose cricketing stature has slipped to decidedly second rank.The real strength of world cricket lies not in the old ,,white °/°° empire but in
the game’s popularity amongst African and South Asian populations, both in
their home countries and in their scattered diasporas. The West Indies have,
since the 1950s, produced some of the world’s most brilliant players and
successful teams. From what was once “British India” have come players and
teams as talented as any, with India and Pakistan long ranked amongst the
world’s best. Even Sri Lanka occasionally surprises its way to the top, as it
did in 1996 when it won the World Cup. Bangladesh and Kenya – Canada’s first
two opponents at this year’s World Cup – are only beginning to show their
potential. And although the South African national squad is still dominated
by men of British and Dutch descent, there is widespread support for cricket
amongst the country’s African, South Asian, and mixed-race populations.Canada’s team reflects cricket’s post-colonial realities. Our team’s coach is
Gus Logie, who played for some of the great West Indies teams from 1978 to
1993. He recently replaced Jeff Thomas, the Australian who coached Canada
into the World Cup. Of the fifteen players who make up the team, five were
born in Canada, most to parents who immigrated from cricket playing countries.
Three were born in South Asia, and seven in the West Indies (which for
cricketing purposes includes Guyana). Captain Joseph Harris, though born in
India, developed many of his skills in Barbados. Canadian-born Nicholas de
Groot played at top level in Guyana. One the best players, John Davison, grew
up in Australia. Ian Billcliff learned to play cricket in New Zealand. Most
of the team, though, have long lived in Canada, and play much of their cricket
in the Toronto area.In that most multicultural of cities, with more than 40% of its residents
foreign-born, cricket is far from being a marginal sport. Many of the
Canadian Cricket Association’s 12,000 members play in Ontario, along with
hundreds more who play outside the Association. In 2001 Toronto hosted the
World Cup qualifying tournament in which loyal supporters willed Canada’s team
to a thrilling third-place finish, beating Scotland to earn the final spot in
this year’s World Cup event.In light of this, the almost total neglect of cricket in Canada’s Torontobased media is all the more astonishing. Part of the blame perhaps lies in
cricket’s sometimes arcane rules and rituals. Yet cricket can hardly be
considered more complicated than baseball or gridiron football, and every
Canadian newspaper and broadcaster could surely muster an enthusiastic and
knowledgeable cricket correspondent. Another explanation is the continental
parochialism which marginalizes any sport which does not find its leading
professional practitioners resident in North America. Cricket isn’t covered
by the Canadian media because the American media aren’t interested. Also at
work, though, is a Canadian colonial complex which scoffs at cricket as an
imperial relic, rather than embracing it as the essence of post-colonial
multiculturalism. At its worst, this borders on an unconsciously racist
assumption that the cultural preoccupations of more recent immigrants are of
no real concern to mainstream Canada. After all, isn’t Canadian
multiculturalism supposed to mean that people of all races can partake of the
glories of hockey and Tim Horton’s?Not that we should imagine that Canada is alone in its colonial cricketing
complex. But where Canadians choose to ignore cricket, other former British
colonies choose to excel at it. One thing that unites nearly all cricketing
nations is the particular pleasure derived from beating their erstwhile
colonial masters at their own game. What Wayne Gretzky said about Canada and
international hockey is doubly true with respect to England and cricket.
Everyone loves to beat England.The working out of this colonial complex is not always amusing or benign. On
February 13, England is scheduled to play its World Cup opener against
Zimbabwe in the latter’s capital city of Harare. But a storm has erupted over
whether England should play there when President Robert Mugabe is busy
starving and terrorizing millions of his own people. Mugabe has made Britain
and “British settlers” (many of whom have been in Africa longer than the
average Canadian’s ancestors have been in Canada) the scapegoat for his
country’s problems. Despite strong calls from the British public and
government for the match to be moved to neighbouring South Africa, the
International Cricket Council and the World Cup organizing committee have dug
in their heels, and insisted that the match should proceed. Zimbabwe has
raised the stakes by refusing to play in any match rescheduled outside the
country. Thabo Mbeki and his government in South Africa have backed
Zimbabwe’s stand on this issue. England’s team, under captain Nasser Hussain,
now seem certain to refuse to play. What, I wonder, would Canada have done if
it had been scheduled to play in Zimbabwe?If Canadians were able to watch the cricket World Cup without mortgaging
their homes to a satellite or cable monopoly, they would see an engaging and
entertaining sporting festival. There will be no drawn-out five-day Test
matches here. The games are all one-day affairs played between teams in
uniforms so colourful as to make baseball look boring and conservative. The
tournament begins with the teams divided into two groups of seven. The top
matches will be played in scenic grounds before multi-racial audiences
numbering in the tens of thousands. Canada’s cricketers will enjoy such
grounds in Durban, Cape Town and Paarl, but will be lucky to see many
spectators. And they have about as much chance of beating the big fish in
Group B – South Africa and the West Indies – as Scotland would have of beating
Canada in Olympic hockey. Even the slightly lesser fish in the group, Sri
Lanka and New Zealand, will be impossibly beyond reach. But against the two
other “minnows”, Bangladesh and Kenya, Canada stands a real chance, especially
in a one-day format famous for producing upsets.The best thing that could happen to Canada’s cricketers, though, would be for
Canadians simply to raise their sporting gaze beyond North America and notice
that the World Cup is happening at all.Peter Henshaw is a research professor in history at the University of Western
Ontario, and the author of The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South
Africa since the Boer War (Cambridge University Press, 2003)This article was published in Canada by the London Free Press on February 12,
2002.
