Cricket as ‘utopian homeland’ in the Pakistani diasporic imagination

Abstract

For many people in South Asian diasporas, cricket is an important component in processes of identification and sense of belonging. It is argued in this article that when a diasporic population engages in Pakistani cricket, it does not necessitate identification with the concerns of the current Pakistani nation state. Rather, cricket fandom in the diaspora celebrates a dream about what Pakistan could have been. This dream is important for the way people see themselves as Pakistanis in a multi-ethnic society and a globalised world, and thus also constitutes a place to interpret their experience of their diasporic contexts. It is suggested that the production of meaning in spectacular events, like a cricket match, is as much with the peripheral audience as with the central performers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway, it is argued that the same cricket event may mean very different things, depending on the context of viewing and the location of the participants.