Cricket

Shorlisted for The Cricket Writers' Club book award 2018

"An astonishing piece of deep scholarship and stylish concision. The book possesses a richness and an intellectual grasp far greater than a short review can properly reflect." - Paul Edwards, The Cricketer

"The injunction to keep politics out of sport is age-old. Muddle-headed too, as Stephen Wagg's comprehensive comparative history of the politics in cricket demonstrates. This thorough and necessary book should become a standard reference." - Gideon Haigh, Australia's leading cricket writer

"Building thoughtfully on the work of the late Mike Marqusee, this is an insightful and richly rewarding labour of love. Astutely structured and deftly researched, the book draws on the author's deep knowledge of geopolitical reality and how it manifests itself in post-Imperial cricket, enabling an ambitious brief to be admirably met. At times, indeed, you wonder how the game has survived the context in which it is played. If you want to know why cricket is the world's most racialized, politicised and fascinating ballgame, look no further." - Rob Steen, Senior Lecturer and award-winning sports journalist, University of Brighton, UK

"Cricket is one of a few sports where nation vs nation remained a primary contest well into the new millennium. Inexorably tied to a colonial past, cricket also reflected the aspiration of its new nations and nationhoods over the last five decades. In a masterful work of scholarship, Wagg gives us an engaging, comprehensive new history of modern cricket. From the relentless churn of events, achievements and controversies around the cricketing globe, he teases out the sport's engagements with the zeitgeist: the tussle between the old world and the new, the tumult of race and gender, the advent of "professionalism", globalisation and the corporatisation of cricket. As much as the book is about modern cricket around the world, Wagg has also skilfully identified the world's footprints on modern cricket." - Sharda Ugra, Senior Editor, ESPNcricinfo and ESPN India

"Now seems the ideal time for the publication of a book pertaining to the history of how cricket has developed in and out of step with the political and social sphere ... Among others, the book is dedicated to the late American writer and political activist Mike Marqusee, and leans heavily on his totemic treatise Anyone but England. Though this book is less polemic than that work, it slots in comfortably next to it on a cricket love's bookshelf, and loses little in comparison to its relative. There can be little higher praise than that." - Wisden

"For those that see cricket or sport as an amphitheatre in which it is possible to both observe and challenge society's ills, there is much here to stimulate. It is an example of a complex narrative that can be presented simply without compromising the nature of its subject matter. It tells us much about the sport but also shines a light on areas of our modern life that should concern us. It seeks to encourage us to ask questions about the future of cricket but also, perhaps just as importantly for a historical work, ask questions about the world in which we live." - Stephen Hedges, Swansea University, International Journal of the History of Sport

"Stephen Wagg's book provides an insightful read for those who view cricket through a political lens. It is an essential read for anyone concerned about the state of the contemporary sport. It is my cricket book of the year ... Read it and have a Happy New Year." - Jon Gemmell, Morning Star