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Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:15:00 GMT
University historians confirm their ranking as cricket experts
A SPECIAL journal confirms the key role played by University of Huddersfield experts in the field of cricket research.
Co-edited by lecturer Duncan Stone, the March 2012 edition of Sport in Society – issued by top publisher Routledge – is sub-titled ‘New perspectives on the social history of cricket’. And its line-up of eight articles, dealing with cricket on English soil and overseas, includes four written by University of Huddersfield researchers.
They include an examination of the role played by Victorian churches and chapels in fostering the rise of cricket among working men; controversy over the early emergence of cricket leagues in the South of England; and cricket in nineteenth-century Ireland, where at one time it was the country’s most popular team game.
In his introduction to the journal, Duncan Stone pays tribute to the work of his co-editor, Dr Peter Davies, who, before early retirement, laid the foundations for cricket research at the University of Huddersfield, where a roster of PhD candidates continue the tradition.
Duncan argues passionately that sport and its cultural and social significance deserve to be treated just as seriously as other forms of history.
Attitudes are changing, he believes, although sports historians are still on the receiving end of snobbery. To counter this, he organised a special symposium in 2011 that brought a wide variety of specialists to the University of Huddersfield to discuss the issues.
“In an Olympic year, the value placed on sport has probably never been higher in academic circles,” added Duncan. “Previously, perhaps, there has been a good deal of ignorance as to its importance as a social and cultural force as a social, cultural force.”
Duncan has been teaching sports history to students on the University of Huddersfield’s sports journalism degree course, covering a wide range of topics such as the economics of sport, women and sport, soccer hooliganism, drugs controversies and the role of sport in the inter-war years.
The Sport in Society project came about after Duncan and Dr Davies had attended International Cricket Council conference and proposed the special edition.
The University of Huddersfield contributors are Sean Reid, on Irish cricket; Dennis O’Keefe on cricket and the church in Calderdale; Bob Horne on early cricket in Brighouse; plus Duncan Stone himself on amateurism and the cultural meaning of cricket in the South of England.
Other contributors, from universities around the UK and overseas, deal with issues such as the role of British Asians in Yorkshire cricket; a geographical analysis of cricket in Cardiff during the nineteenth century; the recent best-selling American cricket novel ‘Netherland’; and the significance of cricket when the British Empire was at its height.
