The televised sport ‘monkey trial’: ‘race’ and the politics of post-colonial cricket

Abstract

Most critical analyses of racism in sport have taken place under conditions of white institutional domination, deploying a white/non-white binary model. But what of cases in which the issue of racism may not be confined to the usual antagonists? In recent years, international cricket, once clearly bearing the stamp of British imperialism, has been increasingly controlled by a coalition of cricket authorities, media corporations and entrepreneurs from the Indian subcontinent. This new order was strikingly revealed in early 2008 when Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh allegedly called Andrew Symonds, one of whose biological parents is Afro-Caribbean, a ‘monkey’ during a Test match in Australia. This article examines the ensuing furore in the international media and the organizational manoeuvring and resolution among the cricket authorities. It argues that the changing international political economy of sport is having a significant impact on its post-colonial cultural politics, including patterns of conduct and contested readings of mediated sport events.