Comments on: The Game Remains Afoot

By: Bradman

Bradman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a few years since I read it, but The Tao of Cricket addresses your question of “after 160 years, can we actually continue to call this a ‘colonial’ tradition?” I liked the book a lot, and it, like Alex Bellos’s Futebol take sports to make more general national/political/anthropological/and even philosophical claims. The Coop writeup does a better job than I about arguing the specifics of cricket, with its striving to be skillful/win’s being frowned upon as ungentlemanly and while the eventual urge to win would, in some way, become a loss to the world as a whole. But it’s a fun history for someone like me, and I also took a lot out of the description of the peculiarities of luck and chance in cricket.

Nandy also uses cricket to talk about national feelings, showing, I think, that cricket somehow transcends that, as you’ve noted. But I could be mistaken.

Amazon has the first six pages of the intro. If anything, it’s a fun summer read at the Point.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for that full toss, Bradman. Ashis Nandy has indeed written a ton on Cricket and Nationalism but his brand of psychological-history is not my cup of tea. The whole thing is a sticky wicket, if you ask me.

By: Nitin

Nitin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This may be an opportunity to write about another Colonial legacy - English.

So very often people ‘correct’ English spoken with an Indian accent.

But if Americans, Australians, Irishmen and Yorkshiremen can have their own accepted accents, then surely 300 million Indians can claim to be pronouncing the word correctly !

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

HA! Well said. Anyone “correcting” the pronounciation should be told off because how can we make fun of someone if they don’t have a funny accent!?
Still, your comment made me search for accents of English and I found this awesome site: accents of english . Click on Punjabi and listen to the Pakistani v the Indian. Very strange. Why would Punjabi speakers across the border have diff. accents? The Punjabi language is the same.

By: Whorf

Whorf — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Why should the accents be the same? They’re growing up in different countries. Just because the home language is the same doesn’t mean that their accents of their second languages will be, too. Compare me, for example, to my youngest brother. Right before he was born, we moved to Massachusetts. Our English sounds nothing alike, but we grew up speaking the same Lithuanian.

Anyway, back to Nandy. Granted, I wasn’t an elitist graduate student back when I read the book, but I didn’t find it too psychological. I found it light and interesting and provocative. But if you’re going to hate, you’re going to hate. So hate.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I’m sorry. Let me rephrase: I am too cool for Nandy.