Cricket: Imperial Afterlife of the Gentlemen's Game

“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know.”

— C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary

The latest ICC T20 World Cup has been among the most acrimonious in recent memory, largely shaped by India–Pakistan tensions and the geopolitics that shadow their encounters. Cricket, however, has not suddenly become political. It always has been.

Steeped in a long history of colonialism, class hierarchy, race, and capital, the game continues to carry its imperial inheritance into the present. While today’s players are more representative of the middle class, meaningful representation from the most underprivileged sections remains rare—hardly surprising given cricket’s deep colonial and elitist foundations.

Cricket is not merely a sport; it is a social institution shaped by power. Its history is inseparable from class hegemony, capitalism, racism, and resistance. It has functioned as a tool of colonial discipline, a site of class struggle, a medium of political subjectivity, and, at times, a weapon of the weak.

Cricket originated in Britain and was consciously used to transmit bourgeois morality and nationalist ideology, both among the English working class and across the empire. As historian Cecil Headlam famously wrote, British colonisation followed a pattern: first the hunter, missionary, and merchant; then the soldier and politician; and finally, cricket. Former England captain Douglas Jardine went further, calling cricket “the greatest asset of the empire.”

A striking example of this fusion of power and sport was Lord Harris. As Governor of Bombay, Harris oversaw colonial administration in India; upon returning to Britain, he became president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). He captained Kent, served as vice-captain of England, and chaired the meeting that formed the Imperial Cricket Conference.

Harris embodied the imperial elite—simultaneously a colonial ruler, politician, and cricketing authority—using the game to pacify colonial subjects while facilitating extraction and exploitation for British aristocratic and bourgeois interests.

The social origins of cricket further reveal its class character. Though played in England as early as the 16th century, it was patronised by aristocracy and gentry. While peasants played informal versions tied to agricultural calendars, the nobility formalised and controlled the sport. Geoffrey Moorhouse, in The Best Loved Game, notes that few images are as deeply embedded in English imagination as village cricket—yet even village cricket was structured around hierarchy.

Cricket clubs were founded by and for gentlemen. The MCC institutionalised class divisions by distinguishing between amateurs (gentlemen) and professionals (paid players), a rule that persisted until 1962. A 1956–63 cricket industry report itself admitted that county cricket was widely criticised as a preserve of snobbery, with committees drawn from an insular elite.

Race and caste were equally entrenched. Black cricketer Johnny Mullagh was once ordered to eat his lunch in a kitchen by an opposing captain. In India, Dalit cricketer Palwankar Baloo was forced by his Brahmin teammates to eat outside the ground. Charlie Parker, son of a labourer who took 4,278 first-class wickets, played just one international match—an exclusion rooted in class. Australian fast bowler Jack Marsh was barred from travelling with his team because of his colour; journalist J.C. Davis remarked he would have been the world’s best bowler had he been white.

Nowhere was cricket’s political potential more dramatically reworked than in the West Indies. Born out of slavery, cricket became a site where the colonised confronted the coloniser on ostensibly equal terms. It allowed the subaltern to assert dignity against empire.

As C.L.R. James described it, cricket became a “weapon of the weak.” Stuart Hall recalled James’s observation that the British believed the empire rested on the playing field—and losing signalled imperial decline.

West Indies’ dominance of world cricket in the 1970s and 1980s was inseparable from its anti-colonial confidence. Yet even here, contradictions persisted: despite Black players dominating the team, the first Black captain, Frank Worrell, was appointed only in 1960, on the eve of independence.

Since the 1980s, West Indies cricket has declined alongside neoliberal restructuring and regional economic hardship. Historian Hilary Beckles identifies three phases—colonial, nationalist, and globalist—the last marking the erosion of collective identity under global capital. Sunil Narine’s career, prioritising IPL, BPL, and CPL contracts over national duty, exemplifies this shift.

In the Indian subcontinent, cricket occupies an exceptional cultural position. Under colonial rule, it remained an exclusive European preserve for decades. Indian clubs emerged late: Aligarh Muslim University’s club in 1879, Parsi Gymkhana in 1887, and Hindu Gymkhana in 1894.

Colonial administrators such as Lord Harris and Lord Willingdon organised tournaments, while princes patronised the game to signal loyalty and collaboration.

Indian rulers used cricket strategically. Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala not only financed the 1911 All-India tour of England but also employed cricketers as State officials. That tour itself was a political gesture, organised shortly after the assassination of a British official in London, to project peace and imperial harmony.

Cricketing dynasties followed: Ranjitsinhji, whose fame earned him a throne, openly opposed Indian independence; Nawab Pataudi played for both England and India, as did his son.

Yet, many Indian cricketers lived in poverty. C.K. Nayudu, India’s first great cricketing hero, struggled to marry off his daughters. After Independence, princely patronage gave way to state and corporate sponsorship: Air India, railways, banks, and cement companies employed cricketers, not out of benevolence but for advertising and legitimacy.

The decisive transformation came with television and neoliberal capitalism. Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s shattered old structures by paying players handsomely, introducing night matches and coloured clothing, and turning cricket into a media spectacle. Cricket became a global commodity.

Today, India dominates world cricket, reflecting the shift of capitalist power from West to East. The Indian Premier League is the sport’s most lucrative product. Scholars like Arjun Appadurai describe Indian cricket as a complex hybrid of colonial inheritance, princely power, bureaucratic mobility, and commercial professionalism. Prashant Kidambi argues Indians were drawn to cricket precisely because it embodied the allure of colonial modernity.

India–Pakistan cricket, meanwhile, mirrors post-Partition trauma and State rivalry. What once functioned as diplomacy has increasingly become a theatre of aggressive nationalism. Elections, media, and capital weaponise cricketing encounters. Pakistan’s exclusion from revenue flows within the ICC system reflects India’s institutional dominance.

Corruption is the logical endpoint of this system. Former cricketers have described the IPL as dehumanising; former anti-corruption chief Neeraj Kumar documents systemic fixing and scams. Cricket historian Boria Majumdar argues modern Indian cricket reflects the deeper contradictions of Indian capitalism itself.

As Appadurai observes, cricket in India offers something to everyone: bureaucrats manipulate nationalism, entrepreneurs monetise sentiment, and the working class gains a fleeting sense of belonging. Yet this shared excitement masks enduring inequalities.

Cricket’s money, power, and cultural reach ultimately reveal its imperial afterlife. The game remains shaped by the same forces that birthed it—class hierarchy, racial exclusion, and capitalist extraction—long after the empire itself formally ended.

The writer is an independent researcher based in Jammu. An engineer by training from N.I.T Srinagar, he is interested in South Asian history, politics, Islam and cricket. The views are personal.