Breeze, "Sunday Cricket" & Sam Selvon's "The Cricket Match"

    In these two stories, we get a look at how sport and competition can be an equalizer in a postcolonial world. The stories also touch on how much sports can tie into a culture's identity. In "The Cricket Match" we see a more traditional idea of what we might think of cricket, a British game, but with some people from the West Indies playing. In "Sunday Cricket," we see a full-on West Indies story, from diction to how the characters acted. The common ground, though, was the game of cricket. It did not matter where they came from, on the field, each person had an equal opportunity to perform and compete. While it's thought of as a traditionally British game, the men from the West Indies were impressive in "The Cricket Match," the narrator saying, "Them Englishers never see a stroke like that in their lives. All heads turn up to the sky watching the ball going." In this game, preconceived superiority and social class did not matter. This proved the game did not belong solely to the English, but could be enjoyed and played well by others.

    Not only did people in the West Indies partake in cricket, "Sunday Cricket" shows just how much it could become ingrained in cultural identity. The first person narrator seems infatuated by the sport, more so than his religious following. He is drawn away from church because of the sport and even when he eventually goes back, it still seems to be the thing on his mind as he says, speaking about his worship, "We voice lif up like we was ready to over run a pitch." He uses other analogies to the sport and is constantly talking about matches. It was interesting to see a different perspective in this story from the first one, seeing not only did people play cricket in the West Indies, but also adopted it and adapted it into their own culture the way they wanted to, which was not necessarily as 'gentlemanly' as the English.

-cs

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