South African Cricket, Imperial Cricketers and Imperial Expansion, 1850–1910

Abstract

‘It has become an accepted fact,’ declared one South African observer in 1915, ‘that where Englishmen are banded together, either by reason of duty, self-advancement or force of circumstances, there cricket will be played.’[1] Indeed, throughout the British Empire cricket had followed on the heels of exploration, military might and political intervention in establishing a British code of civilization in foreign territories. This article will explore the early development of cricket in southern Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism. The origins of the game in South Africa will be examined as well as its development up to 1910 (the date of Union in South Africa) as a site of a burgeoning imperial ‘brotherhood’ between Britain and its most contested colony.