This book explores how cricket in South Africa was shaped by society and society by cricket.  It demonstrates the centrality of cricket in the evolving relationship between culture, sport and politics starting with South Africa as the beating heart of the imperial project and ending with the country as an international pariah.   The contributors explore the tensions between fragmentation and unity, on and off the pitch, in the context of the racist ideology of empire, its arrested development and the reliance of South Africa on a racially based exploitative labour system. This edited collection uncovers the hidden history of cricket, society, and empire in defining a multiplicity of South African identities, and recognises the achievements of forgotten players and their impact.   

Bruce Murray is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Previous publications includeThe Peoples Budget: Lloyd George and Liberal Politics, 1909-10 (1980),Wits: The Early Years (1982) andWits: The Open Years(1997).  He is co-author ofCaught Behind: Race and Politics in Springbok Cricket (2004), and co-editor of Empire and Cricket: The South African Experience 1884-1914 (2009).  Richard Parry has a Ph.D. from Queens University, Canada, and written variously on resistance to colonialism, South African cricket and social history, and international taaxation. He was a contributor toEmpire and Cricket: The South African Experience 1884-1914(2009). Jonty Winch received his Ph.D. from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and has written six books includingEnglands Youngest Captain: The Life and Times of MontyBowden (2003).  He also contributed toEmpire and Cricket: The South African Experience 1884-1914 and co-authoredCricket and Conquest: The History of South African Cricket Retold (2016). 

Foreword; Andre Odendaal.- PART I: THE LANDSCAPE.- 1. Introduction: Landscape, Players and Politics; Richard Parry, Jon Gemmell and Jonty Winch.- 2. Eclipse of the Summerbok: Percy Sherwell, Paul Roos and the Competition for a National Game for South Africa; Geoffrey Levett.- 3. Not the same thing as on grass: Cultural Pessimism and the Development of South African Cricket, Matting Wickets and the Migration to Turf, 1876-1935; Dale Slater.- PART II: THE PLAYERS.- 4. African Cricket on the Rand: Piet Gwele, Frank Roro and the Shaping of a Community; Richard Parry.- 5. Rhodes, Cricket and the Scholarship Legacy: A Southern African Perspective, 1903-1971; Jonty Winch.- 6. India in the Imagination of Indian South African Cricket, 1910-1971; Goolam Vahed.- 7. Diffusion and Depiction: How Afrikaners came to Play Cricket in Twentieth-Century South Africa; Albert Grundlingh.- 8. The Education of Bruce Mitchell and the Union Babies:  History, Accumulation and the Path to Triumph at Lords, 1924-1935 Richard Parry and Dale Slater.- 9. Rejects of the Sporting Whites of the Continent: African Cricket in Rhodesia; Jonty Winch.- PART III: THE POLITICS.- 10. Should the West Indies have Toured South Africa in 1959? C.L.R. James versus Learie Constantine; Jonty Winch.- 11. The DOliveira Affair: The End of an Era; Bruce Murray.- 12. Who are we ... to tell the South Africans how to run their country? The Womens Cricket Association and the Aftermath of the DOliveira Affair, 1968-9; Rafaelle Nicholson.- 13. The Newlands 'Walk-off'; Patrick Ferriday.- Index.