Hi Tom,
That’s a good question and one that Niall Ferguson has made some interesting observations about at various times and places. Here’s one, taken from the lecture that he gave to FPA on the subject of, “Is the U.S. an Empire in Denial?”
“I am always tempted to; at this point to reflect on the tragedy that cricket is no longer played in this country as the result of an unfortunate colonial rebellion in 1776. My book has rather sad paragraph about the last great New York cricket match in the 1770s, when a touring England eleven dutifully lost to the colonists. I have tried to suggest that losing to the colonists is one of the ways that the British tried to keep their empire together. I had rather hoped to find that the British had won that match, and this might be one of the explanations for the war of independence that no one had noticed.”
Here’s the link:
http://www.fpa.org/topics_info2414/topics_info_show.htm?doc_id=193437
In case you missed it, Ferguson is the author of Empire: The Rise and
Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.
In fact, the book has several sad paragraphs on the “subject” of the great game.
“Demise”, you can almost hear the bulkheads cracking, can’t you Salty?
HTH
Cheers
Mayfly
