By George Smith
Can you remember where you were during last summer’s Cricket World Cup Final? England vs. New Zealand, the twists and turns, the four overthrows, the tie, the super-over…Then, there was Ben Stokes’ 135 not-out against Australia in the Ashes just six weeks later: England’s dismal 67 all-out in the first innings, a 73-run partnership for the last wicket, a reverse-sweep six, a missed run-out chance, an LBW appeal given not-out, then that cut through the covers, and the ensuing scenes of ecstasy amongst a sun-drenched crowd at Headingley…
Whilst some of you may have shared these special moments me, I suspect that to many others the paragraph above will have made little or no sense. What’s a “super-over”? What’s a “reverse-sweep six”? What on earth is an “LBW appeal”? If you do count yourself as one of these readers, please do bare with me. I hope to draw attention to something other than (larger than) cricket in the following paragraphs. For all those cricket fans on the other hand, especially English cricket fans, the two moments described above will bring back an array of unforgettable memories. They will to be able recount in remarkable detail where they were, what they were doing, who they were with.
For my own part, as last summer’s cricketing story unfolded, I was going through the agonising process of writing up my Masters dissertation on "the commons". Aside from being a welcome distraction from the hours spent tapping away at my keyboard, following the cricket while writing about the commons turned out to be a welcome combination of events because it allowed me to understand the game in a new and even more fascinating light: that cricket itself was a commons.
To explore this unlikely comparison let me sketch out a clear definition of the commons. To do this, it’s helpful to think about the commons being made up of three basic elements:
Firstly, any commons must revolve around some kind of resource. Or, as Johannes Euler (2018) has more eloquently put it: ‘there is no commons without some matter’. In a classical sense, the resources of a commons would be something like a forest, a fishery or a pasture – physical resources that can be exhausted if over-used. However, the resources in a commons can also be immaterial – like knowledge, a cultural practice, or even more abstract notions like time. Indeed, it is within this former sense that we might understand cricket: as an “immaterial resource”. The game is not something you can touch; instead its value as a resource is found in the endless enjoyment, entertainment, intrigue, and fascination that it brings to those who play and follow the game. From children practicing their techniques in Mumbai’s infamous Shivaji Park, to English fans clutching at their seats during last summer’s World Cup Final – everyone who participates in the game is drawing from a rich cultural history and practice that is continually evolving.
Secondly: ‘There is no commons without community’ (Mies, 2009). That is, commons are not just resources, they require communities to manage, sustain and subsequently benefit from those resources. The best-known scholar to recognise this fact was Elinor Ostrom, who spent her career demonstrating how communities could successfully manage the resources in a commons. Focusing on the institutions in place to govern the use and distribution resources in a commons, Ostrom ultimately demonstrated how the commons are not just resources but also a mode of organising through which a community both shares and preserves them (Fournier, 2013). The same may be said of cricket – it necessitates a community that shares and preserves the game itself. Indeed, without its fans keenly following the success of their team, or without local teams organising Sunday matches on the village green, the game would cease exist.
The final constituting element of a commons focuses on the relationship between a community and its shared resource. The commons in this sense is seen not merely as a “thing” – an institution or a common property arrangement, for example – but as an ongoing process involving relationships between people and their shared resources that depend upon values of sharing, cooperation and respect. In other words, what’s shared in a commons are not merely its resources, but specific forms of sociality (Fournier, 2013). This is the idea evoked by historian Peter Linebaugh (2008) when he suggested we might better understand the commons using the verb “to common” (or “commoning”). It reminds us, as Bollier and Helfrich (2015) suggest, that the commons involves an activity, a doing, that relies on processes of ‘joint action, of creating things together, of cooperating to meet shared goals’.
In many ways this idea of commoning, and the values it engenders, is at the heart of cricket. For a start, the evolution of the game since the late 16thcentury – its rules, customs and institutions – has been slowly shaped by generations of players and followers of the game. Crucially, these enthusiasts didn’t withhold their ideas and contributions to cricket. They freely shared them, implicitly understanding that the development of the game relied on openness and generosity. The more people who could be introduced to the game and could share in its joy, the better. The same is true today: no one owns the game; we are merely its custodians who have a responsibility to pass it on to the next generation.
In another sense, the very process of participating in cricket engenders certain key values. Much is made of the "spirit of cricket", which is based on ideas such as fairness, honesty, hard-work, sportsmanship etc. Indeed, in Moeen Ali’s recent autobiography, the England cricketer admits how playing street cricket in Birmingham as a child saved him from ‘a life of drugs and crime’ (2018: 54). It offered a way into a community with a shared joy and passion for the game, whilst also enabling him to develop his skills and a sense of fairness and respect to others. Indeed, the life skills Moeen developed playing cricket in the streets of Birmingham have been an integral part of his life:
‘I continue to come back because I am still part of the community… That time in my life, those days were so special… in my mind I have never left this area. I shall always belong to Stoney Lane.’ (Ali, 2018).
Analysing cricket in this way – as a commons – allows us to understand more clearly where its value is derived and how this value is reproduced. As a source of joy, entertainment, intrigue, fascination etc., cricket is shared by a community of cricket lovers from an array of different backgrounds. In so doing, this community is committing to protecting the game for future generations who might be able to share in some of these endless joys and fascinations of the game.
However, like every other commons, the cricketing commons is susceptible to enclosure – the privatisation of a shared resource for the pursuit of private profit. As capital expands, it needs to appropriate new spaces of shared wealth – material and immaterial. It is in this regard that we might analyse Sky Sports’ almost exclusive broadcasting rights to the game – as an enclosure of the commons.
Once available on free-to-view television, watching televised cricket is now preserved for those paying Sky customers. From an ethical point of view, this is problematic. As previously outlined, cricket’s value is generated communally; the joy and thrill it brings to the cricketing community is essentially a gift from previous generations. For a private corporation, like Sky, to appropriate that gift is wrong. Not only are they privately appropriating the gift of previous generations, they are profiting from the joy and sense of connection cricket brings to its community of followers.
From a more practical point of view, the enclosure of the cricket commons is visibly damaging the health of the game. As Moeen points out himself:
‘The fact is that with no live cricket on terrestrial television a ten-year-old just cannot get the vital exposure’ to the game that he and his Dad had growing up with it on the BBC.
How, in other words, can one learn the game – with everything that brings – if one never sees it in action? When cricket was last on terrestrial television in 2005, the peak viewing figures during one game was 8.4 million in the UK.* In the equivalent Test Series last summer (2019) between England and Australia, during one of the most exciting conclusions to a Test Match of all time, there were only 2.1 million viewers in the UK.*
These are striking numbers, and participation figures reflect this decline in viewing figures. In 2007/08 there were 419,500 people participating in cricket in England. In 2019 there were only 291,200 people participant in cricket in England.* In short, there seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of people participating in the game and those watching the game on television. Sky’s enclosure of the cricket commons certainly plays a role in this. Ultimately, their privatisation of the sport is restricting the spirit of “the gift” with which the game must be openly shared and passed on to new people.
Cricket remains a much loved game around the world, but we should understand why this is so and the threats it is likely to face in a society increasingly driven by economic imperatives that necessitate the enclosure of common wealth. For a community of cricket-lovers, the game represents an opportunity for genuine human connection – just watch some videos of English fans celebrating last summer’s World Cup Final, or imagine the numerous scenes of children playing cricket in urban centres across the world, from Birmingham to Mumbai, Dhaka to Kingston. Enthusiasts of cricket have passed down the game to us with a generosity of spirit and a hope that the game might bring joy and connection to as many people as possible. It is our responsibility to pass it on in the same spirit.
Notes
*The Ashes is the name given to the bi-annual series played between England and Australia.
*Figure quoted in a Guardian article (2005): ‘Recordviewing figures for Channel 4 as 8.4 million watch climax to fourth Test’. Available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/aug/30/ashes2005.broadcasting *Figure quoted in a Guardian article (2019): Ben Stokes’s miracle Headingley knock sets Test record for Sky. Available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/26/ben-stokes-miracle-headingley-test-record-sky * Figures taken from statista.com at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/899199/cricket-participation-uk/
References
Ali, M., (2018), Moeen, Allen & Unwin, London
Bollier, D., Helfrich, S. (2015), ‘Patterns of Commoning: How We Can Bring About a Language of Commoning’, In: Bollier, D., Helfrich, S. (Eds.), Patterns of Commoning, Common Strategies Group in cooperation with Off the Common Books, [Online] Available at: http://patternsofcommoning.org/contents/
Euler, J. (2018), ‘Conceptualising the commons: Moving Beyond the Goods-based Definition by Introducing the Social Practices of Commoning as Vital Determinant, Ecological Economics, Elsevier, volume 143, pp. 10-16
Fournier, V. (2013), ‘Commoning: On the Social Organisation of the Commons’, M@n@gement , volume 16, number 4, p. 433-453
Linebaugh, P. (2008), The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All Peter Linebaugh,London: U of California, Berkeley
Mies, M. (2014), ‘No commons without community’, Community Development Journal, volume 49, pp.106-117
Comments