Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
This article was downloaded by: [University of California, San Francisco]On: 22 December 2014, At: 08:47Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, PoliticsPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20
A Matter of Necessity: The Minnow and World CricketBinoy KampmarkPublished online: 19 Feb 2007.
To cite this article: Binoy Kampmark (2007) A Matter of Necessity: The Minnow and World Cricket, Sport in Society: Cultures,Commerce, Media, Politics, 10:1, 182-194, DOI: 10.1080/17430430600989308
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430430600989308
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
A Matter of Necessity: The Minnowand World CricketBinoy Kampmark
The debate on the minnows and their value to the game of cricket presents an interestingpicture before the next World Cup to be held in the Caribbean. Some cricketing voices of
the established powers seem to argue that the minnows are to be assessed purely on thebasis of performance indicators, crude tallies or victories, losses and draws. This
contribution urges the developed nations of cricket to be sensitive to the broader issues ofthe game in emerging countries – to understand that a lack of infrastructure should not be
a message of inferiority but a source of encouragement. Given some of the successes of thenew teams in the last World Cup, one can only be optimistic about their future.
The World Cup in 2007 will confirm a growing trend in recent years: that cricket isbeing played by an increasing number of nations, proselytes of a game which isseemingly breaking out of the provincial nexus of ‘Commonwealth’ countries. But the
rise of cricket’s stature in countries with rival sporting codes, domestic instability andinfrastructural problems reveals a paradox. [1] The new teams, the converts, bring
with them a host of problems for the traditionalists. Supporters of cricket want a goodpress, a broader audience base sated with the logo-filled hours of one-day cricket,
abbreviated numbers of overs and rapid scoring rates. But within cricket’s hierarchy –more specifically, former players accustomed to the stratospheric standards of Test
class cricket – are worries that standards are being eroded, the values of the gamechallenged by new sides who have yet to prove their mettle against teams of ‘greater’worth. The sentiment, while understandable, defies the logic of spreading the game.
It also denies the problem confronting the fundamental tenets of playing cricket,a refusal to acknowledge the evolutionary character of a sport that is gradually
extricating itself from the narrow confines of colonial memories and legacies.The debate on the minnows and their value to the game of cricket presents an
interesting picture before the next World Cup to be held in the Caribbean. In cricket’s
ISSN 1743-0437 (print)/ISSN 1743-0445 (online)/07/010182-13 q 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17430430600989308
Binoy Kampmark, Selwyn College, Cambridge University. Correspondence to: [email protected]
Sport in Society
Vol. 10, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 182–194
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
current order, there is a perception by some cricketing voices from the establishedpowers that the ‘developing’ cricketing nations are to be assessed purely on the basis of
performance indicators, crude tallies or victories, losses and draws. Such a view tendsto ignore the complex problems of race and politics which afflict such nations in the
‘developing’ order. This piece urges the ‘developed’ nations of cricket to be sensitive tothe broader issues of the game in emerging countries, to understand that a lack of
infrastructure should not be a message of inferiority, but a source of encouragement.Given some of the successes of the new teams in the last World Cup, one can only be
optimistic about their future. An assessment by some of the wise voices of cricketwould indicate otherwise.
‘Double’ Standards
Let us start with an observation on cricketing ‘standards’, as they are described in the
rhetoric of a pre-season tour to England by Ricky Ponting’s Australians, until that timeall-conquering and seemingly unassailable. The occasion was the memorable Ashes
tour of 2005 to England, a tour that saw England reclaim the treasured urn of cricket’soldest cricket rivalry after almost two decades of failed attempts and crushed
expectations. The high standard of cricket that eventuated erased the memory of howone-sided and miserable English cricket had been for years, marred by confused
selection policies, inept strategies and, perhaps most importantly of all, a poorcricketing infrastructure. So many Ashes tours in recent times have been struck by an
infuriating predictability: four-day battles rather than five-, long Australian battinginnings followed by the destructive brevity of England’s response. But the rhetoricallead-up, the representation of the Ashes before the first ball is played, is revealing in a
peculiar context, exposing the considerable cleavage between the rhetoric of what is‘great’ in cricket (an appearance, a symbolic reference) and what is mediocre (the
actual state and standard of play). The Ashes is a ‘great’ occasion; the occasion of a tourby minnows to an established cricket nation is a display of ‘mediocrity’. The opening
features to the Australian tour of England in 2005, an Ashes tour that was advertisedas unprecedented in recent memory, with sell-out crowds, tickets booked months in
advance, were a sign that this occasion was unlike others. The English began the gameswith their old unguarded confidence; the Australians, after initial nervousness atLord’s, settled into the pattern of crushing the old enemy at the home of cricket,
McGrath being particularly savage off a good length.While the series gathered pace and interest after the first one-sided match
(Australia’s batsmen faltered against the swinging ball, McGrath had to call in injured),providing spectators with one of the more remarkable Test series in recent memory,
the old colonial rivalry asserted itself. The World Cup of 2007 seemed far away. Why,the Tests had again reasserted their value, and the Ashes had finally become relevant
after almost two decades of one-sided slaughter. In the lead-up commentary tothe Ashes, one could be forgiven for believing that no other contest mattered.
The commentary in England, and to a lesser extent, Australia, confirmed the truth that
The Minnow and World Cricket 183
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
Ian Chappell brought home to Allan Border when the latter succeeded the Australiancaptaincy from a beleaguered Kim Hughes. ‘Do what you want,’ he was reported to
have said, ‘but whatever you do, don’t lose to the Poms.’ Suddenly, the game seemedprovincial again, limited in worth to an old cricket constellation of power where no
other team mattered, nothing greater than the colonial exchange of ‘mother country’and distant cast-off colony. This was the ‘home’ of cricket, and the dominant powers
spoke of continuing biases, their old preferences. This says more about the nature ofthe game than perhaps we realize: that cricket remains, at least in one sense, an
establishment sport, a parochial game that is not innovative, that insists on keepingstandards secret within its Masonic order of the Marylebone Cricket Club, theAustralian equivalent, the ACB, and various other ‘homes’ of cricket – India, South
Africa, and Pakistan. The initiates are meant to have made the cultural revolution incricket, a modernization leap which neglects the evolutionary progress made by the
established powers in previous eras.Power in the sense of cricket interests is localized in the subcontinent powerhouses:
South Africa, the West Indies, the Marylebone centre and, of course, the Antipodes.The minnow provides the challenge, the contrast, the radical antithesis that enables the
established players to develop styles and new approaches to the game of cricket. Theyare not equipped with the weapons of the centre – why and how should they be, giventhe political struggles, the rival sporting codes and the lack of unity from the various
cricketing organizations? But they come with a freshness of spirit, of innovation.Rather than being degenerate voluptuaries who only play the sport as a commercial
enterprise, an end in itself, they are also its best representatives, representing an oldform of the game. Writers recalled the refreshing adventurousness of Davison of
Canada, bowling a form of off-spin that had gone out of fashion. In this case, theminnows offer the vision of what has been lost to the game: a lack of complete
seriousness, an amateurish appreciation for the finer points of the sport. Is it too muchto suggest that the establishment figures of the game have become estranged from
the very essence of a sport they chose to purify and preserve through reform andadvancement?
The critics contend that the standards of cricket are eroding with the inclusion of
new teams. This is despite such competitions as the World Cup Qualifying Series,which have seen teams as diverse as the Cayman Islands, Italy, Kuwait and Nepal put
bat to ball. The promoters of the game, the commentators, the archons of cricketingstandards, are evidently not proselytizing about their craft, a regrettable feature about
a sport which has found it difficult to escape the colonial mirror. They sound like anti-globalization protesters, attacking the spread of codes and currents of capital without
an adherence to quality and benchmarking. The global historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in his description of Dunedin, talks about cricket being played on an ersatzlawn, a testament to its potency and versatility in being exported into far-flung
colonial spaces. [2] But the entire nobility of the game is ersatz, its establishment kingsmaharajas who refuse the revolution beyond the centres of power they hold so dear.
The oddity of seeing Holland, once naval rival of Britain, play and beat the mother of
184 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
cricketing tradition, should be a charming sight. But the orthodoxy of the establishedcountries demands that standards and administrative power remain centralized.
The traditional cricketing powers are duellists who demand no interruption fromchallengers who are outside their circle of trust. England collapse, they play miserable
cricket, struggle against spin, and leave the field battered. But the display isencouraged, to be continued the next time the old enemy is confronted. There is
always confidence in another round of play. There is always next time for mediocrity,for one-sided non-events. When cricket is played between establishment powers,
mediocrity is permissible. The minnows are not allowed that luxury – they must leapover the talent divide or remain confined to a lower class. If they fail repeatedly, callscome for their ‘relegation’, for their demotion to a hypothetical lower league. When
defeats should be cherished for being wise, they are disregarded as important for thedevelopment of the game. The magnitude of failure is always emphasized:
Bangladesh’s failures are always recounted, and success, rare and sweet, is mocked(‘Was it a fluke? Was the game fixed?’)
There was a complete contrast, then, in the way the venerable figure of cricket,Richie Benaud, reacted at the home of cricket, Lord’s, when Bangladesh capitulated
before the members in spectacular fashion. It was a reaction that sits oddly with thosecountless resignations to defeat and one-sidedness that typified old Ashes Tests, at leastsince 1989. Heavy with cutting hyperbole, Benaud launched into the defeated side;
their performance had been a nightmare, a ‘shambles’. ‘After witnessing this two-and-bit day farce at Lord’s, I am convinced our game’s governing body – the ICC – must
make a firm and swift decision,’ he wrote on the eve of the Ashes tour, the same tourwhere standards were meant to be displayed with such rigour between the established
powers. [3] Benaud went on to elaborate what he believed to be the ‘good’ version ofcricket. ‘Both teams [Bangladesh and Zimbabwe] need to be put on hold for the good
of cricket. They are simply not good enough to be pitched against proper Test matchcountries.’ The almost vengeful tone of punishment suggests something deeper, the
paradox of the game as a spiritual essence undermined by the forces of ill-advancednations. Former Australian captain Kim Hughes, who led Australia in the dark dayswhen the powers of cricket were located in the island powers of Barbados and Antigua,
rather than Melbourne and Sydney, seemed to agree. When one considers thatAustralian cricket was, at times, so bad during the Hughes era, racked by inner dissent,
failure and the post-traumatic disorders wrought by the departures of D.K. Lillee andGreg Chappell, the call is somewhat odd. ‘I don’t see how it’s benefiting Bangladesh, I
don’t see how it’s benefiting anyone.’ [4]Kepler Wessels, a former player for both Australia and South Africa, argued that the
World Cup needed a dramatic culling, a reduction from 14 to 8 teams: ‘I thinkcertainly a lot of these teams are out of their depth and I wonder how much it does forcricket. There are too many matches that don’t mean much.’ [5] Jeff Thomson, past
Australian quick bowler, whose thunderbolts terrorized England in the Australiansummer of 1974–5, was as blunt as ever, arguing for a separate competition for the
smaller nations as it would ‘be better than us playing these obvious games where
The Minnow and World Cricket 185
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
they’re going to get their backsides kicked’. [6] Benaud’s solution is similar. ‘Whatshould be done is to have both countries scheduled to play a carefully programmed
series of matches against A teams and minor teams from the other eight countries andthey should play against one another as well.’ [7]
These pessimistic readings tend to ignore the evolutionary premise behind theestablished teams: that they all had to have begun somewhere. The case of New
Zealand is particularly relevant to Bangladesh’s current plight, given its somewhat slowstart at the top level. The Black Caps took 45 attempts to win their first Test match on
13 March 1956. The 1950s proved disastrous, with defeats in 21 of the 32 matchescontested. A victorious rubber would prove even more elusive, coming in 1969–70,more than a decade after the first taste of victory. A closer examination of New
Zealand’s performance paints a record that rivals, if not exceeds, the calamitousdisplays by Bangladesh. During the dark 1950s, nine of its 53 completed innings failed
to reach 100, and 24 failed to reach 200. Infamously, a shattered home side could onlymuster 26 in its innings at Eden Park in March 1955 against the English tourists. [8]
Yet, despite the dire performances, the Evening Post could be found remarking on 27August that year that New Zealand’s poor cricket prowess said everything about the
virtues of the game.But there is a more contemporary dimension that affects ‘developed’ yet poorly
performing nations. In light of the negative comments advanced against under-
performing ‘minnow’ sides, one must again draw the reader back to the instanceswhere the teams of ‘developed’ cricketing nations have been crushed, and are indeed
falling by the wayside in the world pecking order. One finds a crucial fact that Benaudand his fellow critics of the minnow nations ignored. Should establishment nations
like the West Indies, hampered by a talent drought, by a ‘lack’ of infrastructure, be puton hold, left dry in a lower league to freshen the reserves? Surely, the tape of cricket
should be paused to allow standards to catch up, to recuperate. The greatness ofsporting teams moves in cycles of triumph and decay; talk of demotion and relegation
are rarely a matter between established powers, and they have not surfaced regardingWest Indian cricket. The superpower has collapsed, without suitable successors of thecalibre of Sir Vivian Richards or Michael Holding, and with only the likes of Brian
Lara to hold the fort, exclusion is surely warranted under the brutal counsel of Benaudand Hughes. It should then seem incredible that Hughes is, without knowing it,
outlining the fate of Australia in the 1980s, the fate of England in the 1990s and,indeed, the West Indians in the last five years when he asserts the following. ‘They’re
just not up to standard, and it’s going to go backwards if you keep getting thumped.No matter what Dav [Whatmore, Bangladesh coach] says, there’s no value at all in
getting beaten inside three days regularly. They don’t allow hacks to play in the PremierLeague in soccer.’ [9] The plight of the modern, decimated minnow incarnates theproblem of the establishment nation of yesteryear. The security council of cricket, for
want of a better term of reference, fears the encroachment of other voting members,other challenges to its order. Is cricket analogous to global peace and security? Should
sport be seen in the light of military and peace and conflict strategies, where ‘rogue’
186 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
states unable to measure up to the standards of civilization should be quarantined tillthey improve? We would hope not, but the conservative powers are insisting that the
old doctrines are being violated, that the family of cricket of nations is beingchallenged (though not seriously enough) by a lack of competition. The World Cup in
2007 will culminate in this ultimate idea of profanity or redemption.The most critically noteworthy comment against this school of criticism comes
from a star from Canada in the last World Cup, the South Australian off-spinnerJohn Davison. A hard-hitting lower-order batsman and deft slow bowler who
qualified for Canada, he destroyed the West Indian bowling on 23 February 2003,hitting the World Cup’s fastest century. The minnows were delighted: Davison hadvindicated their cause. The establishment quaked. Carl Hooper, the West Indian
captain, was reported as saying that ‘When I woke up this morning the last thing Ithought was that a Canadian would have batted like that’. [10] In an interview with
the sports journalist Tim Lane in September 2004, Davison outlined the mostformidable reasons why degrading the minnows and emphasizing their position in
cricket through negative commentary is counterproductive to the overall image ofthe game. As with the old adage of politics, power comes with responsibility, and the
establishment powers should be more responsible: ‘Australian cricket is in a fortunateposition of being the dominant team in world cricket and the attention theAustralian team draws is much-deserved, but with that attention there should come a
sense of responsibility to help grow the game.’ According to Davison, dismissing suchone-sided games ‘as a waste of time is, I think, a self-centred attitude’. Broader, more
holistic approaches are required. ‘The game versus the United States (on Monday)wasn’t much of a spectacle but the value gained by growing the game in the
potentially huge North American market, I think, far outweighs this.’ [11] Davison iswiser than the critics: he sees the ramifications of a tolerant policy: ‘From our
experience in Canada, there was quite a bit of exposure through print media andfrom Asian TV channels and that interest has stimulated some growth in the game.’
Davison has noted an increase in requests in schools that cricket be put on the schoolcurriculum.
Canadian team-mate and captain Joe Harris has said that the ICC’s only option ‘to
develop the sport is to allow us to play in these [global] tournaments’. [12] Otherrepresentatives from the smaller teams have concurred with Davison’s observations.
Namibian captain Deon Kotze argued that the presence of Namibia in the World Cupwould be of benefit in the long run, notwithstanding the defeats of such magnitude as
that witnessed in the opening days of the 2003 World Cup: ‘I don’t think cricket cangrow globally if it’s kept to a select group of ten or 11 or 12 teams. The only way the
game will grow globally is if countries like Namibia, Netherlands, Canada, Kenya areallowed to play and allowed to grow into the game.’ [13] A logical observation, but it isnot one that necessarily holds in higher circles of the game. It is, admittedly, a position
that varies among the various nations and cricket hierarchies, and disagreement wouldprobably arise in the event that a minnow team were relegated. India and Pakistan, for
instance, are unlikely to agree to a relegation of Bangladesh.
The Minnow and World Cricket 187
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
Indeed, the coverage is inconsistent on the plight of the new teams: the hyperbole ofdefeat is matched by the hyperbole of victory when the occasional success occurs. In
mixture of relief and frustration, the former Lancashire coach Dav Whatmore, afterBangladesh defeated Australia by five wickets, spoke of the ‘potential’ in Bangladeshi
cricket: ‘There are individuals starting to come through. It is really a sleeping giant.We just need to wake it up a bit and nurture it.’ [14] The victory sent the nation into
raptures. Australian papers reported the defeat with solemnity. ‘Tens of thousands ofBangladeshis poured on to the streets and partied into the early hours yesterday after
their struggling national cricket team pulled off the great upset in one-day history.’The words of Bangladesh Cricket Board president, Mohammad Ali Asghar, was‘simply without words’ while the nation’s prime minister, Khaleda Zia, sent a
congratulatory message to the team, hoping for a continuing ‘winning streak in thematches ahead’. [15]
Correspondent Simon Briggs provided another example of an optimistic overviewof the World Cup achievements of the minnows in 2003. Obvious choices for him were
Davison of Canada with his ‘67-ball hundred – the fastest in World Cup history. Healso bowled classic off-spin of the kind that seems to have gone out of fashion.’ Such
enthusiastic language, such encouragement for the challenging role that a player of a‘minnow’ team can provide. Then there was the formidable Jan-Berry Burger’sachievement of ‘plundering 85 from 86 balls’ from the English bowling attack. Then,
the ‘overweight’ figure of Fieko Kloppenburg from Holland, being only the sixth playerin the history of one-day cricket to ‘score a century and take four wickets in the same
game’ against Namibia. [16] Other stars in Briggs’s catalogue of performing minnowswere Ashish Bagai of Canada, the ‘deft wicketkeeper who has a strong claim to being
the silkiest gloveman in the [2003] tournament’ and the left-arm swing bowler fromBangladesh, Manjurul Islam, who had been ‘the toast of the tournament’. Such positive
description seems hyperbolic when contrasted with the assaults mounted on theminnows from the more conservative quarters of cricket’s echelons.
Davison represents the fine points of the minnow teams: in a sense, they havenothing to loose. Established teams are presented with a zero-sum game where victorymust be achieved. But the result of this is invariably vicious: the minnow risks
massacre, the established team risks humiliation. It is the latter outcome that keepsdrawing fire from the establishment players, coaches and cricketing nations. All of this
may be beside the point, if one looks at the trends of cricket since the last World Cup.One has to ask what these critics are really complaining about. Is it over-
commercialization, something which they invariably encouraged with the onset ofsponsorship and the endorsement of the one-day game? There is, it seems, too much
of it, and the minnows are taking the blame in this criticism of the overall diminishingquality of cricket. A ruthless law of diminishing returns is operating, reducing matchesof five-day duration to the brevity of four days, and seeing matches of one-day
duration proliferate with a certain meaningless repetitiveness.The minnows, one suspects, bear the brunt of this Spenglerian speculation about
cricket’s declining standards. Consider the calamitous situation described by Simon
188 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
Briggs, who had been so positive about describing the finer points of the minnows’performance in another article:
This shortage of genuine contests is a major problem. At one end of the WorldChampionship table, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are sitting ducks. At the other,Australia is wielding a giant bazooka, even if the last year has seen them revert totheir old habit of losing the final Test of the series. [17]
After describing the problems of other cricketing nations – ‘The Asian bloc nations
may be tigers at home, but take them out of their natural habitat and they turn intopussycats. Even the West Indies, formerly such intrepid travellers, appear to have
developed a phobia for foreign shores’ – Briggs offers a curious solution, though heseems to be confiding the issue to one of Test-playing relevance:
The remedy is obvious. If you removed Zimbabwe and Bangladesh from the maincircuit of Test cricket, you would cut down players’ workloads by perhaps 10 percent. Kenya would then join the lesser nations in a second-class Test league, with thetop team winning the occasional privilege of a crack at some of the big-nameopponents. [18]
The double-insult is apparent: the minnows cannot handle the Tests, and are, byimplication, a joke. But they are allowed, at least to some commentators, to paradetheir ineptly honed skills in losing in the one-day arena. One-day cricket is also, by
implication, a cheapened enterprise rather than a forum of talent, being a fluffycommodified spectacle for ‘bums on seats’. Indeed, warns Keith Stackpole, current
Australian cricket commentator and solid batsmen from the 1960s, there is a surfeit ofone-day matches, a glut that threatens to ‘kill the game’: ‘One-day cricket is all about
supply and demand. The public demands as many limited-over matches as possibleeach summer and the administrators deliver them.’ Indeed, Stackpole’s remarks are
revealing in how transient the one-day game remains for the notion of standards.‘One-day series come and go with such regularity these days that for the most part they
are forgotten quickly.’ [19] Either way, the one-day minnow cannot win.
Growth of Cricket
With Bangladesh beating Australia, the cricketing blogosphere lit up with optimisticassertions that the order of cricket was changing. Having lost to Bangladesh in
previous competitions, Indian supporters were particularly keen to support the rise ofBangladesh, eschewing suggestions of match-fixing. While the tri-nation series in
England in 2005 reverted to type, with Australia and England competing in the final,the mark had been made. Bangladesh were not incompetent, were not pretenders.
They could put bat to ball and challenge a side. Ponting’s misery said it all after theopening defeat in England against Bangladesh prior to contesting the Ashes.
The same can be said of other teams. Certainly, Namibia has a role to play in futureWorld Cups. World Cup 2003 director Ali Bacher stated that ‘Since their passage to
the final in Toronto, the Namibian cricketers have become the biggest thing in their
The Minnow and World Cricket 189
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
country since [the Olympic sprinter] Frankie Fredericks’. [20] Its credentials aregrowing, its performances have not been uninspiring (its match against England on 24
November 2004 gave some hope, a score of 219 off the allotted 50 overs). But, asNamibia’s coach Dougie Brown noted, the leap across the cricket divide between the
minnows and the major teams can only be accomplished with structural reforms and acricket revolution. The reality is that such sides mirror an ancient form of the game,
a bygone era when players had vocations and professions. Namibia’s standard hasimproved with its inclusion in the South African Standard Bank domestic one-day
competition. But the realities of commercialization have done nothing to help thecountry’s cricket, which soon after the 2003 World Cup received the blow that itsnational teams had been excluded from that same competition by the United Cricket
Board of South Africa. The blow has proven disastrous, given that the sport was enjoyinga growing profile in Namibia (one source noted that 2,000 children were playing a form
of mini-cricket in the northern regions of the country). [21] The result is that regionalcooperation has had to increase, with the Namibian cricket board needing to ‘look
elsewhere’. Zimbabwe and fellow minnow Kenya have proven amenable to relations.But some of the traditionalists do not like the image they find. The higher ideal has
been bought by Heinz, Texaco and dollars of Packer pedigree. Every time ChannelNine broadcasts cricket in Australia, one is not so much treated to the cricket as theadvertising bonanza of the latest Steve Waugh signed bat, or the garish cricket painting
more notable for what it leaves out than what it depicts. The warriors who fought forstandards are now degrading the nobility of the sport – not that one should blame
them for this. The allure of monetary gain, the patterns of revolution are set: the youngare now old, docile and angry at the tigers of the periphery.
There is, of course, a tension between the need to seek the dollar and the need tomaintain standards as well. The problem is finding the balance. Evidently, this was not
struck with the ICC moves to promote the United States ahead of more qualifiedcontenders for the World Cup in the Caribbean. As the British Daily Express reported,
ICC ‘bosses admit they want to cash in on the commercial benefits of staging matchesin America when the game’s biggest event goes to the Caribbean’. [22] Scotland wasenraged. Participation in the World Cup, argued Scottish Cricket Union president
Chris Carruthers, had to be ‘decided on merit, not on financial or politicalconsiderations’. According to Carruthers, ‘the USA has virtually no native cricket
structure while countries like Holland, Namibia and, of course, Scotland, have workedfor years to promote the game’. [23] In this case, the lure of the dollar seems to trump
the lure of talent pure and simple.
The Romance
In one sense, there is a romantic angle to understanding the purpose of the minnows
in world cricket, or least the role they can play in the cricketing imagination. They areour moral level, a reminder of what cricket used to be. They tell us of a pre-Packer era
when the players struggled to make ends meet, of a lack of sponsorship, an amateurish
190 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
spirit which the entire sphere of sport has lost. While it is hard to disagree with thematerialist on the necessity for decent remuneration for a commercialized sport or
fault the necessary sentiments of the Chappell brothers in their pursuit of a decentstandard of living from their sport, enlisted, albeit less nobly, by the late Kerry Packer,
the minnows allow us a nostalgic indulgence.The very same individuals who had been instrumental in supporting the last great
revolution in world cricket, a necessary revolt that came at the expense of the oldstructures that saw the sport as a game for people rather than a full-time endeavour,
are now found to be resisting the spread of the game. At the time of this famed revoltthat resulted in World Series Cricket (WSC), the centre revolved around interminablegames played in white flannel, men of hobbies with otherwise full-time paying jobs
outside the game of cricket. In an ironic twist, the men of Bradman’s ilk whostubbornly fought the Chappell brothers over pay rises for their local state sides
believed in a noble craft, a sport not evaluated in pecuniary terms, but the aesthetic,the noble. To play for one’s country was a privilege; to be remunerated for it was of
secondary importance. How chivalrous to them, but how cruel and barbarous itmust seem now. Now, the chivalrous are the very people mocked and ridiculed.
They provide an opportunity for leisure, for play, but they are reviled for theiramateurishness. One wonders whether the conservative warriors for standards today,the revolutionaries of yesteryear, are seeing themselves in these new teams and players
– the accountants, the lawyers, the professionals who set aside their work for theduration of a World Cup to play in the name of a higher ideal of sport. ‘We work for a
living nine to five, and train from five to nine and then make our wives happy nine toeleven,’ explained Harris. ‘Then we wake up and do it all over again. It makes life a lot
harder to come and do this [World Cup].’ There was only one true solution: ‘To getbetter you need to do it full time.’ [24] Namibian coach Dougie Brown offered similar
impressions: ‘We’re a group of doctors, nurses and electricians.’ [25]But this indulgence comes at a price. The minnows are criticized for their
amateurish disposition and must, therefore, not play teams of higher stature. They arenot allowed to improve. A vicious cycle arises: to improve, they must play the higherteams, but are not allowed to do so because of their reductive impact on standards.
The result is invariably less sponsorship, less promotion, less power to attract funding.They remain stuck in the torpor of part-time ritual and petty local disputes, facing
stronger sporting codes, and difficult political circumstances. In a sense, the process isself-legitimating: the developed cricketing powers demand the status quo while
demanding the spread of the game, but would prefer better minnows, minnows whohad made the leap beyond the talent divide. But, goes the central argument, the
professional standards of cricket cannot be sacrificed to the entry, or continuation, ofthese minnows, in competitive world cricket. The response should be essentially one offinance: commercialization is the way to go – the Packer solution, the injection of the
logo into the game, the proliferation of symbolic corporatism that is sport’s spectacle.The results, in time, would eliminate the status of amateur. Australia could be
dethroned from its mantle by an African nation, a novelty that would set it apart from
The Minnow and World Cricket 191
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
the normal challenge posed by South Africa. But, given the current conservatismtowards minnows, one wonders whether this is really the case.
A touch of iconoclasm is in order. The minnows allow perspective into the game ofcricket. They are by no means incompetent: their record in the last World Cup proves
otherwise. There is something charming about a part-timer who hits out againstGlenn McGrath, an accountant who bowls with some ability at Brian Lara. Namibia is
proving to be a promising aspirant to the one-day game. During the World Cup,Namibia showed its colours by defeating Sri Lanka in the one-day game, having
England in trouble in the Port Elizabeth World Cup match, and causing the Pakistanbatting line up some grief. Indeed, the Australians were astonished to face a confidentBangladeshi side whose skill in the one-dayers suddenly manifested themselves in the
summer of 2005. Decimated in the tour matches, the minnows struck back withpurpose against the Australians.
But even given poor records, are we not forgetting one key tenet of cricket, thevirtue of good will and sportsmanship among sporting teams? Again, to recall the New
Zealand performances of the 1950s, which allowed the Daily Express a moment ofreflection in an editorial on 27 August 1955:
Though it may not have added to New Zealand’s reputation on the cricket field, ithas fully maintained the Dominion’s name for good sportsmanship and goodfellowship – and that, as it is repeated at public function after public function, is theessence of cricket. Perhaps it is the most important point on which to havesucceeded. [26]
There is no shame in being defeated by figures of such prowess as McGrath and Lara,
who have perhaps forgotten the roots of good fellowship in the international arena. Ina sense, they have been encouraged to do so. Their interest is on winning, keeping the
sponsors happy, and filling in the quota of victories.The obsession with standards undermines the overall picture of what cricket can do
for the minnow countries. The powerful countries must have a broader sense ofunderstanding: how cricket figures in the broader social and political sense. There have
been concerns with one of the hopefuls, Kenya, where internal problems have beset thenational structure of the game. The game is still trapped in the doldrums of a lack of
sponsorship, local support and infrastructure. Sport, as commentators and playersshould know alike, unites. There are varying visions about the role sport plays: as anaggregate of a society’s ambitions; as a totality that cannot be divorced from the
aspirations of a society; or one that is discrete and separate from the sphere of politicsand society. The great debates about isolating South Africa fell into this category of
debate. John Howard held a narrow, expedient view when it came to expelling SouthAfrica from cricket and other codes; the opponents of apartheid were more concerned
with seeing sport as part of the substructure of South African society. The game shouldbe seen more holistically, within the broader context of how it can help emerging
societies, rather than as a case of target-setting and performance indicators. The talkshould be less of standards than mature political and social considerations.
192 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
Conclusion
Cricket, it must be said, has always been a parochial game. Even if commentators haveexpressed optimism about the game’s attractions overseas, it fights a losing battle of
lacking a universally decipherable language (the advantages of football, that is, soccer,are evidence of this), being stuck in an archaic era that is charming and inscrutable.
The one-day game has gone some way to alleviating this, but newcomers are treated asupstarts. On the face of it, the minnows of cricket should be getting good press, andfeel confident for the forthcoming World Cup in the Caribbean. Despite the
establishment myopia of former players, the growth of cricket as a sport should not beunderrated. Chinese cricket is represented at the Shanghai sixes, and an event was held
between 10 and 12 September 2004. The guests of honour on that occasion were SirVivian Richards and Doug Walters. The guest roll was impressive, with teams from
Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, India and Japan. [27]But it remains to be seen whether the traditional cricket nations are willing to provide
guidance and encouragement, rather than condescending remarks and concerns about‘standards’. Let the new teams strike a note of optimism. They remind the orthodox
hierarchy not merely what cricket was (amateurish, bright, a tough struggle betweenwork and representative duties), but what it can become: a more expanded game witha greater support base and wider audience.
Notes
[1] For examples see ‘Vice-president Raps New Zealand Over “Possible Terrorist Attacks” in Kenya’,Nairobi Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) Radio, 2 Feb. 2003; ‘Kenyan Court ReinstatesDissolved Cricket Association’, KBC Radio, transcript, 18 Jan. 2005.
[2] See Fernandez-Armesto, Millennium.[3] Quoted in Michael Crutcher, ‘Far from Being Marvellous, Richie Benaud Thinks Bangladesh
and Zimbabwe Are an . . . Absolute Shambles’, Daily Telegraph (London), 31 May 2005, 70.[4] Quoted in ibid.[5] Quoted in Tony Lawrence, ‘Jury out over Minnows’ Cup Future’, Reuters, 4 March 2003.[6] Quoted in ibid.[7] Quoted in Crutcher, ‘From from Being Marvellous’, 70.[8] I am indebted to Jon Gemmell for noting these points.[9] Quoted in Crutcher, ‘From from Being Marvellous’.
[10] Lawrence, ‘Jury out over Minnow’s Cup Future’.[11] Tim Lane, ‘Many Valuable Angles to Cricket Minnows’ One-sided Clashes’, The Age
(Melbourne), 8 Sept. 2004, 10.[12] Quoted in Vijay Joshi, ‘Canada Urges Test Nations to Play More with Minnows to Expand
Game’, Canadian Press, 22 Feb. 2003, 10.[13] Quoted in ‘Minnows Namibia Need to Be in Big Pond’, Birmingham Post, 18 Feb. 2003, 27.[14] Quoted in Rodney White, ‘Dav: My Giants Awake’, Daily Star (London), 20 March 2005, 55.[15] ‘Bangladeshis Take Party to the Streets’, Geelong Advertiser, 20 June 2005, 2.[16] Simon Briggs, ‘Minnows Who Had No Fear of Big Fish’, Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2003, 5.[17] Simon Briggs, ‘Minnows Will Devalue Tests’, Daily Telegraph, 12 June 2003, 8.[18] Ibid.
The Minnow and World Cricket 193
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
[19] Keith Stackpole, ‘Limited Overdose May Kill the Game’, Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne), 26April 1998, 20.
[20] ‘Africa’s Surprise Package’, BBC Sport Cricket World Cup 2003 website, available online athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport3/cwc2003/hi/newsid_2350000/newsid_2357100/2357147.stm,accessed 19 December 2005.
[21] Peters, ‘Namibia’.[22] ‘Fury over Move to Promote US’, Daily Express (London), 22 March 2003, 97.[23] Quoted in ibid.[24] Quoted in Joshi, ‘Canada Urges Test Nations’.[25] Dougie Brown quoted in Martin Gough, ‘Minnows “Need Pro Status”’, BBC Sport, Cricket
World Cup 2003 website, available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport3/cwc2003/hi/newsid_2800000/newsid_2803900/2803917.stm, accessed 19 December 2005.
[26] Quoted in Ryan, ‘Kiwi or English?’, 33.[27] Tony Munro, ‘Slovenia the Focus for Europe’s Minnows, Wisden Crickinfo, ‘Beyond the Test
World’, 19 Aug. 2004, available online at http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/135297.html, accessed 19 December 2005.
References
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Millenium. London: Bantam Books, 1995.Peters, Laurie. “Namibia.” In 2004 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. London: Queen Anne Press. 2004.Ryan, Greg. “Kiwi or English? Cricket on the Margins of New Zealand National Identity.” In Cricket
and National Identity in the Postcolonial Age, edited by Stephen Wagg. London: Routledge,2005.
194 B. Kampmark
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
ity o
f C
alif
orni
a, S
an F
ranc
isco
] at
08:
47 2
2 D
ecem
ber
2014
