At any rate, I think of cricket as having high standards of sportsmanship, decency, and a reverence for letting the best man win. After all, it's used as the example of that linguistically.
Now I find that there's cricket and then there's cricket.
From a photo caption in The Great Courses Magazine published by The Teaching Company, in an article about the course Peoples and Cultures of the World, taught by Professor Edward Fischer, Vanderbilt University, I find (underneath a photo of dark-skinned, bushy-haired guys in loincloth and ankle bracelets and upper armbands and not much else, moving around on what looks to be a cricket field):
The British introduced the game of cricket to the Trobriand Islanders, who subsequently modified it to fit their cultural model. In the Trobriand version, the winner is picked before the match starts based on which team's chief has more prestige.
Hmmm. Sounds more like a certain variety of political convention than a cricket match...
At any rate, ahem, it definitely strikes me as "not cricket" to pick a winner instead of playing the game and seeing who comes out on top fair and square. Don't you think so?
...Pause while blogger googles a bit... OK, so we're talking about the New Guinea region. I should have guessed...
Oops. We're in trouble -- or at least I'm getting conflicting information right off the bat. Searching for "Trobriand", "Island" and "cricket" I'm getting a lot of hits, and with the first one I pull up, a lecture by Murray G. Phillips, Centre for Sport Studies, University of Canberra on "Cultural Variations on Sport," I get (emphasis mine):
...How has the tradition Western version of cricket been modified to suit the Trobriand Islanders?
The game was transformed in many ways. Perhaps the biggest change was that the home team was always the winner - this according to our definition does not constitute a sport. In addition, the visiting teams batted first. Each out was followed by a celebration. The bowling action was not traditional. Runners as well as batsmen. Bat and ball were not regular. They bowled alternately from each end. There was no limit to the number of players. Scoring varied considerably with 6 runs being scored by a lost ball, or hitting the ball over the coconut tree. Umpire was from the batting side, and when sides changed so did the umpire. There were ritual entrance dances. There was the mascot dressed as a tourist. Instead of trophies, there was an exchange of food with the home team putting on the feast.
But more than changing the rules and format of the game, it also meant totally different things for the Trobriands. It was introduced as a substitute for intertribal warfare...
I have to agree that this does not constitute a sport. If you pick the winner ahead of time, it can be a game, perhaps, but it can't be a sport.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for letting the toddler beat you in a foot race now and then, or discreetly fumbling a baseball so that a third grader gets the thrill of just beating the ball to home plate, but, for pity's sake, for grown men to adjust their play to make sure that other grown men win, well... shucks... how disappointing.
I know. I know. Some guys let their bosses win as a matter of course, and tradition holds that you don't necessarily want to beat a Senator on a golf course, especially while the press is watching, but...
I'm probably not as disappointed as bookies might be, the outcome of the game not being in doubt, but still...
2 comments:
They have a much better variation in Polynesia. It's known as "kilikiti". It's a very inclusive game. The entire village plays (against another village). The host village automatically loses if they don't provide enough food, and cooks and servers are considered players, as are spectators. There's also usually someone in charge of cheerleading as well as mocking the opposition. They use a three-sided bat so nobody knows where the ball is going to go, but the rules are extremely flexible in any case. Because of its general amity, I'd say it's definitely cricket. (Cricket itself has often become so serious in modern times that it's not cricket at all). It's the national sport of Samoa and also very popular in New Zealand. Google it and you'll come up with all kinds of entertaining stuff.
Each to his own taste. I enjoy a little tension in the game (except, of course, when one of my kids is playing, in which case a shut out is just fine with me). Yet another reminder that it takes a lot of cultures to make the world.
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