Manhattan Cricket
Shashi Tharoor is going to a cricket party on April 28. He has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, and plans to watch the World Cup final with “a raucous group of Indians and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Brits, Australians and Zimbabweans.” But there are no Americans among this New York crowd.
He assures us this isn’t about ethnic “discrimination.” Thank goodness, because West Indians are also conspicuously absent from Shashi’s “raucous” clique. Despite the fact that the inaugural match, in Jamaica, was a victory for the West Indies and the final will take place in Barbados!
Also absent (in a conspicuous way) is any mention of cricket as something people DO in New York. So, a naive New Yorker might be left thinking of cricket as a too-civilized spectator sport for snooty Commonwealth exotics.
However, not all cricket players dress like “poor relations of Gatsby,” as Shashi puts it. I’ve seen guys in rasta hats playing cricket in Van Cortlandt Park — part of a long tradition that’s been around since before the Second World War. (Check out this old clipping from Time magazine on Harlem Cricket.)
If Shashi were just any old op-ed contributor at the New York Times, I wouldn’t care. But he’s the (departing) under secretary general of the UN. Perhaps we can hold him to a higher standard? He’s also written a book about India, “the emerging 21st century power.”
Shashi concedes that cricket isn’t as decorous or English as Americans imagine it to be. That’s putting it mildly. In 1999, fans at Kensington Oval (in Barbados) behaved so badly that plans for THIS year’s World Cup were greatly endangered. As were the lives of Aussie players who had bottles thrown at them, during a one-day match between Australia and the Windies. I witnessed this horrifying violence from a safe distance while visiting my family in Port of Spain. The Prime Minister of Barbados had to publicly apologize for (some of) his people’s “ragamuffin” behavior and warnings were issued by the West Indies Cricket Board regarding the 2007 World Cup.
Of course, it’s heartwarming to know this has been resolved, and I’m glad Shashi didn’t dwell on the problem of fan violence. But still, there is something in his approach to cricket — and to cultural difference — that I do not like.
What bothers me about Shashi’s column isn’t the cheap shots he takes at American baseball fans, or at “America” — whatever that is. While he points out that the global audience for cricket is immense, he fails to convey the reach of cricket. He prefers to perpetuate the idea that cricket is foreign, unknown and alien to America. Well, it’s not. In this American city, the game is part of our cultural history — and our living culture, too. Granted, it may be an aspect of American life that is hidden or ignored. But isn’t this the kind of nuance we might expect Shashi Tharoor to catch? This isn’t just hair-splitting. Unwittingly, he also perpetuates the obnoxious notion that the people who play and watch cricket are not truly part of America.
Of course, we are talking about a lot of non-white cricket fans living and working in America, some as citizens, some as migrants, at a time when xenophobia is on the rise — who don’t necessarily have Shashi’s social connections. And cricket-playing countries aren’t all emerging powers. Some of these countries are small, powerless and, like most cricket fans, trying to get by.
Instead of helping people rethink who really comprises “America,” he wastes his influence on snide remarks that don’t so much commemorate the World Cup as play into the hands of American racists. Not to mention UN-bashers!
Nice going, Shashi.
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