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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1889-5565

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2778-2802

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9068-3199

Abstract

Cricket’s global history cannot be separated from the political histories through which the game has traveled. Although cricket emerged as an instrument of British imperial culture, it has also become a medium of postcolonial agency, commercial expansion, diasporic belonging, and resistance to inherited hierarchies. This special issue examines those tensions across the Caribbean, Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and the United States. The four contributions analyze foreign investment and cultural extractivism in West Indies cricket; the reproduction and contestation of Pākehā norms in a cricket workplace; the glocalization of Indian Premier League (IPL) capital and culture through Major League Cricket (MLC); and the construction of fandom and belonging through IPL teams’ Instagram narratives. The articles highlighted that cricket is not merely influenced by politics; it is an institutional, economic, cultural, and communicative arena in which political relations become consequential. The issue identifies three connected dynamics: cricket converts cultural meaning into economic and organizational power; its global circulation produces negotiated rather than seamless forms of belonging; and coloniality persists through everyday practices as well as spectacular commercial projects. By bringing historical, ethnographic, cultural, and digital approaches into conversation, the issue advances Global South-centered voices on how cricket organizes power, identity, capital, and claims to community.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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