New Books In South Asian Studies

During the 1960s attendance fell at cricket grounds across England. Just as the Church of England lost members in droves in the same period, it appeared that this other pillar of English tradition was becoming irrelevant amidst the social and cultural developments of the times. Making the situation worse were the guardians of the sport, who were reluctant to respond to the changes around them. The men of the Marlyebone Cricket Club and administrators of county sides held to the old class division, preferring amateur gentlemen to serve as their captains, even when there were few Oxbridge graduates with enough money or free time to devote themselves to the sport–or enough talent to merit a captaincy. And while other governing bodies of international sport were cutting ties with apartheid South Africa, the MCC still saw that country’s side as a legitimate competitor and made plans for tours. As Guy Fraser-Sampson shows in his history of English cricket in the late Sixties and early Seventies, these o