Sporting success and failure mirroring society?

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"There used to be a bloke who gave himself out by walking when he'd hit the ball. The popularity of that within his team-mates may be shown by the fact that since his retirement, they no longer reply to any emails, phone calls or text messages."
Adam Gilchrist gives a tongue-in-cheek response to his own philosophy of 'walking'

Oct 12, 2008

By Will last year, mid-June Leave a comment on this post

I’m about to sit down and watch Nation in Film, that BBC programme of West Indies’ tour in 1976. And the following teaser was uttered by Darcus Howe, one of the contributors.

I don’t think West Indian cricket ever had such an intense reflection of what was taking place in society

Is the same true of West Indies now? Does the success of a national sporting team reflect the successes or failures, depressions and moods of society? If it did back then (Howe says that Tony Greig’s “grovelling” comment was, in West Indians’ view, distinctly racist: white versus black), the effect is certainly less so nowadays.

I like stuff like this. Thoughts welcome.

Tags: 1976, cricket-on-tv, Darcus-Howe, society, tv, west-indies |

Comments to “Sporting success and failure mirroring society?” Zeph wrote:
June 23rd, 2007 at 1.51 am

That BBC programme is really good, and it inspired me to write something for another blog which you might possibly find interesting:
http://pseudscorner.blogspot.com/2007/06/things-would-never-be-quite-same.html

W Indies cricket recently has been caught in a vicious circle of inefficiency and failure, but that seems to be about politics within the game and not really the wider society.

Toinette wrote:
July 7th, 2007 at 7.42 pm

Hi there, great site - am planning to explore…
I’ve seen the programme. An excellent snapshot of the period IMHO.
The Caribbean communities of today operate (at least in London) in many more areas of life than was the case in the mid 1970s. As far as cricket is concerned, the recent poor form of the W.Indies side, with the assimilation of the children of the 70s (inc. myself) means that the symbolic importance of cricket within the community has been dissipated, really.
I still love the game though, and recently came back to it through the TMS commentary during the World Cup.
As I’m watching the highlights on Channel 5 (last ODI @Trent Bridge), a question please. Why do certain commentators and cricket journalists have it in for Michael Vaughan? What HAS he done?

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Sporting success and failure mirroring society?