This book provides a ‘state of the art’ review of the academic study of cricket. It defines the current state of the field and will serve as the springboard for future research and scholarship of the game.

• How has our understanding of sport been shaped by sociological ideas?
• How can the study of sport help sociologists to understand wider society?

The sociology of sport is a sub-discipline approaching maturity. This is the first book to stand back and reflect upon the subject's growth, to trace its developmental phases and to take stock of the current fund of knowledge. It offers a 'state of the art' review of the sociology of sport and investigates those areas where sport has come to influence the sociological mainstream. The book also examines how the sociology...

Globalizing Cricket examines the global role of the sport - how it developed and spread around the world. The book explores the origins of cricket in the eighteenth century, its establishment as England's national game in the nineteenth, the successful (Caribbean) and unsuccessful (American) diffusion of cricket as part of the development of the British Empire and its role in structuring contemporary identities amongst and between the English, the British and postcolonial communities.

Whilst empirically focused on the sport itself, the book addresses broader issues such as...