The Cricket World Cup Starts Tomorrow!

Time to get your pads on!  England is hosting the 12th Cricket World Cup, which starts at The Oval tomorrow at 10.30am with a match between England and South Africa.  Cricket's equivalent of football's biggest spectacle will involve the top ten 'Test' playing teams and culminate at Lord's on Sunday 14th July, with a structure somewhat different from the football version - all ten teams will play each other in the first round, before the top four teams go on into the semi-finals. England have hosted the Cricket World Cup four previous times - 1975, 1979, 1983 and 1999, but have yet to lift the trophy themselves; famously they exited the competition in 1999 before the official single was released. Perhaps England will triumph this time? Compared to the soccer version, the tournament has been cheap to hold, as existing cricket stadiums have been used - the main case of boosterism in the tournament's history is the infamous 2007 edition in the West Indies, when a reported US$500m was spent constructing new stadiums and supporting infrastructure, but attendances suffered as supporters from the game's commercial heartlands in India and Pakistan found travelling to the Windward and Leeward Islands difficult, perhaps encouraging their teams' early exit from the competition (Majumdar, 2009)!

So why is this tournament of relevance to soccer-mad boffins?  Firstly, there are many historic links between the two sports.  Cricket, a sport favored by the English gentry, emerged as an organized sport a century (or more) before football, and many football clubs were founded to keep cricketers fit during the winter.  Cricket was a bastion of 'gentlemanly amateurism' (until 1973 professional players had to use a separate dressing room from amateurs) and this allowed for many players to play both sports, most notably perhaps C B Fry, who briefly played in the Football League for Southampton. This has become difficult more recently as both sports have professionalised, but many young players still try their hand in both disciplines - of relatively recent players Phil Neville of Manchester United fame played as an opening batsman for England under 15s.

Amateur cricket played on a village green

Secondly, the amateurism theme is one which is important for the history of Sport in Britain in general, and cricket tried to cling onto its amateurism to the extent that in many counties in the South of England eschewed the development of competitive league structures, as they were felt to encourage professionalism. The research of top cricket historian Duncan Stone on this topic is worth reading!  Cricket is still struggling to establish a viable institutional context for professionalization today, with ever shorter forms of the game being introduced, and new franchises complimenting or replacing the traditional county or state based structures around the world.  Though, there is a good commercial reason for this - if played in Test Cricket form, in which games are played over five days, the World Cup would probably take around three months to complete!

Thirdly, it has a link to 1966 - cricket, then a much more visible TV sport than today, cooperated with the English FA by suspending Test Matches for the whole of July 1966!

So, there are plenty of reasons to fish out your long wave radio and tune into the tournament!

Here is a visual guide to cricket for the uninitiated should any of the jargon above (and cricket has a lot of jargon) have you stumped!