Prodding cricket's underbelly

I was at the recent Lord's Test between England and Pakistan that has led to the latest corruption row in cricket.

The scandal is a reminder that while cricket attracts the interest and influence of the rich and powerful - as do most other sports - its audience goes far wider. There would be no money in trying to fix it otherwise.

And the left and the labour movement have not been absent from the cricket field, as Jon Gemmell's articles in the Morning Star regularly remind us. Neither has class or the class struggle.

There is no evidence that either Marx or Engels was a cricket fan - although the game does get a mention in Engels's 1844 Condition Of The Working Class as something that attracts the interest of workers.

The 19th-century Chartists certainly played cricket. Records reveal that in 1847 a game was held between labourers building the Chartist land settlement at Chorleywood and local residents. So began a labour movement tradition that saw regular cricket matches between the Trades Union Congress and labour correspondents and between left-leaning journals Tribune and the New Statesman.

Cricket's origins lie at the heart of the British empire and it was West Indian Marxist CLR James who wrote probably the best book on cricket, Beyond A Boundary.

James played league cricket in Britain before 1945 and was a veteran socialist activist, helping to found the magazine Race Today.

His book relates how cricket mirrors the ebb and flow of everyday life and the struggles that take place in it, making it the game of capitalist society whether you happen to be an employer or an employee.

The socialist historian David Renton has written a recent book on James and cricket and there is some current research on James's influence on cricket in England.

It was many years before the West Indies were able to appoint a black captain. Likewise only in recent times has it become at all usual for the England captain not to have a public-school background.

Public schools still provide a good supply of first-class players. The route in from other areas of life is more difficult. England fast bowlers famously have sometimes been former miners, but despite work by the England and Wales Cricket Board and counties, cricket facilities in state schools and in working-class communities remain patchy.

The left, however, has been far from absent in commenting on the game.

Mike Marqusee's Anyone But England made the case for supporting opposing sides in a spirit of anti-imperialism, though frankly seeing a Gladstone Small or Monty Panesar in the England side seems a brilliant riposte to racism in sport.

Cricket, like football, tennis, golf and other sports, has also seen an increasing commercialisation. Sponsorship, corporate presence at games, and TV rights deals are all part and parcel of the sport.

Capitalism is a dynamic system, hence 20/20 cricket. Is it a reflection of modern capitalism or a degenerate form of the great game? Debate rages.

As a leading Caribbean socialist said to me recently, I'm for changing society except cricket - where I'm a conservative.