Different Class

The Untold Story of English Cricket

Duncan Stone

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English

Watkins Publishing
17 May 2022

Social & cultural history; Cultural studies; Sports & outdoor recreation

"Shortlisted for the Cricket Writers Club 'Book of the Year' 2022 and the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards 'Cricket Book of the Year' 2023

In telling the story of cricket from the bottom up, Different Class demonstrates how the ""quintessentially English"" game has done more to divide, rather than unite, the English.

In 1963, the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James posed the deceptively benign question- ""What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?""

A challenge to the public to re-consider cricket and its meaning by placing the game in its true social, political and economic context, James was, all too subtly, attempting to counter the game's orthodox history that, he argued, had played a key role in the formation of national culture. As a consequence, he failed, and the history of cricket in England has retained the same stresses and lineaments as it did a century ago - until now.

In examining recreational rather than professional (first-class) cricket, Different Class does not simply challenge the widely accepted orthodoxy of English cricket, it demonstrates how the values and belief systems at its heart were, under the guise of amateurism, intentionally developed in order to divide the English along class lines at every level of the game.

If the creation of opposing class-based cricket cultures in the North and South of England grew out of this process, the institutional structures developed by those in charge of English cricket continue to discriminate. But, as much as the exclusion of Black and South Asian cricketers from the recreational mainstream is the most obvious example, it is social class that remains the greatest barrier to participation in what used to be the national game."

By: Duncan Stone
Imprint: Watkins Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781913462802
ISBN 10: 1913462803
Pages: 300
Publication Date: 17 May 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Duncan Stone is a historian long interested in the social and cultural machinations of sport, the concept and application of amateurism and who, exactly, gets to define the form, function and meaning of sport. He has worked as a forensic photographer, DJ and club promoter, builder, local government officer and lecturer lecturer at the University of Huddersfield, and was previously a visiting researcher at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.

Reviews for Different Class: The Untold Story of English Cricket

A modern-day John Arlott: uncomfortable but indispensable reading for those who love cricket but may so far have avoided Duncan Stone's vital home truths about the game. In this fascinating journey through history, Duncan Stone goes back to the working-class roots of the game, lifts the lid on the myths that cricket lives by, and explains why it's impossible not to love it. A warm, accessible but thorough-going account of how cricket and class are intertwined in England. Full of personal wit and charm but also rigour and drive.