‘From far it look like politics’: C.L.R. James and the canon of English cricket literature

Abstract

Is cricket is cricket in yuh ricketics but from far it look like politics1 This essay juxtaposes C.L.R. James's cricket writings with the canon of English cricket literature, and particularly the work of Neville Cardus. It demonstrates that James's writing was immersed in cricket's literary canon even while it sought to subvert it in the cause of an alternative, postcolonial cultural politics. James's cricket writing both transcended the politics of English cricket discourse and attempted to offer an alternative. A telling example of his technique can be found in his essay ‘Garfield Sobers’. Writing about Sobers allows James to find the hybrid literary styles and forms through which a postcolonial West Indian cricket could be represented. The essay concludes with a critique of James's aesthetic of cricket, arguing that his theorization of the relationship between cricket as discourse and cricket as embodied performance constitutes Beyond a Boundary's major contribution to an understanding of the game as both an instrument of, and resistance to, colonialism.