2. Not Cricket
Samir Chopra & David Coady

This chapter examines the ethics of a variety of on-field practices which are often thought to be unethical, including failure to walk when one knows one is out, appealing when one knows the batsman is not out, and ‘Mankading’. Consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics perspectives are brought to bear on these practices. The chapter also examines the dynamics of the relation between moral considerations and the emergence of new laws regulating cricket. An important illustration of this is the bodyline controversy of 1932, when a moral outcry led to significant changes in the Laws of Cricket. It is concluded that cricket’s distinction between what is permitted by the Laws and what is morally permissible is a desirable feature of the game, although the precise way in which this distinction is drawn can and should be open to the possibility of change in response to evolving societal values.

 3. Rorty, Cricket and Unfamiliar Movements. History of metaphors in a sporting practice
Terry Roberts

In exploring the metaphor, “cricket is a language-without-words-game”, Roberts forwards and develops the suggestion that the game of cricket with all its Laws – both written and unwritten –traditions, conventions and connotations ought to be seen as the history of metaphor itself. What results is a powerful tool for re-interpreting the occurrence of innovations in technique that have steered the evolution of the modern game. As the chapter concludes, rationality in legislating the game of cricket necessarily involves tolerance for the ‘irrational’, for novel practices that occur in the indeterminate space between what is lawful and what is not.

4. Cricket and the Liberalist World-View
Salomon J. Terreblanche

A philosophical study of the link between sport and culture, this chapter investigates the extent to which the structure of cricket can be seen as a product of the liberalist world-view. Nineteenth century Britain was the cradle of both cricket and liberalism. It should not be surprising if this aspect of British culture has influenced the evolution of cricket to the extent that the modern game embodies the ideological frame of mind of its birthplace. Dealing explicitly with the constitutive, rule-bound aspects of cricket, three formal aspects in particular are discussed: first, the toss as a necessary condition of equality of opportunity in cricket matches, secondly the role of the umpire as a bounded authority within the game and thirdly, the interplay of individual and collective interest. With regard to the history of cricket it is argued that an evolution from Lockean to Smithean liberalism can be noted. In the naivety of 19th-century (Lockean) liberalism, in which the game was founded, cricket players were trusted to act in accordance with the spirit of the gentlemen’s game. It soon became clear, however, that when afforded too much freedom by the Laws, the (Hobbesian) wolf inside many players easily gains the upper hand. In the modern and professional era of the game, it is now widely acknowledged that (in accordance with Smithean liberalism) cricket players have to be groomed into gentlemen within a sound social environment governed by explicit laws and disciplinary institutions.

5. Batting, Habit and Memory. The embodied mind and the nature of skill
John Sutton

Cricket is suffused in memory. Both playing and appreciating the game centrally involve various forms of remembering. This chapter focuses on the distinction between explicit autobiographical remembering and the kind of habitual or “procedural” memory involved in complex embodied skills like batting. Generally considered the province of psychology or cognitive science, the phenomenon of habit or skill memory has been largely neglected by philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of mind. However a number of intrinsically interesting questions concerning batting in particular arise when considered from this perspective. While drawing upon ideas from psychology and cognitive anthropology, the argument is supplemented with accounts from general testimony and cricket writing, phenomenology, and other investigations of the embodied mind. While starting from the prevalent view that thinking too much disrupts the practised, embodied skills involved in batting, the chapter suggests that experts do in fact successfully learn mental techniques for how to influence themselves in action, and that the kinds of explicit thought and memory in question are themselves active, dynamic, and context-sensitive.

6. Cricket and the Karmayoga. A comparative study of peak performance
Simon Pearse Brodbeck

This chapter discusses the idea of ‘non-attached action’, a non-teleological attitude allied to peak performance within armies and sports teams. It is a way of relating to one’s actions as simple, non-intended events, without consideration of their possible consequences. This attitude is related specifically to cricket through analysis of typical accounts (of the kind given by ex-player commentators) of the psychological approach of expert cricketers, and through comparison with the martial-existential philosophy taught by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita (the ‘Song of the Lord’), a section of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. Particular attention is paid to notions of non-agentive behaviour, of playing one’s ‘natural game’, and of being ‘in the zone’, and to techniques of mental preparation and mental hygiene. The chapter is framed by a wider juxtaposition of cricketing activity and discourse with martial activity and discourse in the Mahabharata and in Europe.

7. Cricket and Moral Commendation
Jonathan Evans

As evidenced in recent literature in moral philosophy, commending actions on their propensity to develop enduring moral traits is not the province of the virtue theorist alone. For however we understand the moral goals of human beings and the nature of right action we recognize that a temperate, just or beneficent person is more likely to conform to the demands of morality than one lacking in these virtues. If this idea is used as a standard for assessing the worth of activities generally and engaging in sporting activity particularly it becomes clear that the highest level of athletic engagement, i.e. professional sports, is often morally problematic. The not uncommon phenomenon of athletic underperformance once a sizable, secure contract has been achieved, the expanding quantity and severity of verbal abuse directed at officials and other athletes, as well as the increasing incidence of on-field violence, raise concern that developing moral virtues is no longer a goal of professional sporting activities.
  This conclusion, however, is not a result of the concept of sport itself or even the idea of professional sport. Both amateur and professional sport are capable of promoting moral development in their participants by making possession of certain virtues a condition for success in that activity. So the problem lies not in the conceptual details of sporting activity but rather in the formulation or prosecution of the rules and expectations governing the sport in question. The chapter argues that not only is sport capable of being a worthwhile activity but that there is a sport that in fact generally meets the conditions for being a worthwhile activity, namely professional cricket. In defending this claim it is shown that it is not an essential feature of professional cricket that garners our moral commendation but rather a complex set of contingent features: the Laws of Cricket, the enforcement of those laws and the historico-social context in which the game is set.

8. Cricket and Representivity. The case of race quotas in team selection
Douglas Farland & Ian Jennings

The chapter examines the sources of the disquiet frequently expressed in the South African media at the predominantly white nature of the national cricket side. In particular, the authors focus on the argument which claims, first, that national sports teams must be representative, second, that the predominantly white nature of the national cricket side is unrepresentative and therefore unacceptable, and, finally, that the solution to the problem would be the enforcement of a racial quota whereby a certain number of players of colour must take the field each time the team plays.  It is argued that although international sport does indeed derive its significance from the representivity of the national sides which take part, the sense of representivity appropriate to this context entails nothing in the way of ethnic profiles, but rather takes national sides which make up the strongest possible combination of all eligible players – players who are eligible on the basis of nationality and not ethnicity – to be properly representative.  It is nevertheless concluded that the South African national side is unrepresentative, and therefore unacceptable, on the grounds that its ethnic profile, taken together with certain facts about the racial distribution of opportunities in contemporary South Africa, is a plausible indication that young black players are not presented with the same opportunities to develop their talents to the highest level that their white counterparts are.  As a result there seems good ground to think that the larger process from which the South African national cricket side emerges is sufficiently perverted by racism for the side to be considered unrepresentative. 

9. All Equal Under the Sun. A normative analysis of the Duckworth-Lewis rule
Kurt Devooght

This chapter identifies the concept of equality implicit in the Duckworth-Lewis rain rule and confronts it with the responsibility-sensitive egalitarian ideal advocated by such philosophers as Rawls, Dworkin and Scanlon. While exposing the relatively ad hoc nature of the rule, arguments are forwarded in favour of a more explicit rendering of the rule’s conception of equality. To this end, a more egalitarian ideal is developed based upon the principle of responsibility. According to such a concept of equality, compensation and reward are respectively defined in relation to the limits of one’s responsibility: i.e. while one should be compensated for the consequences of events deemed beyond one’s responsibility, one should nevertheless be able to keep the fruits of actions for which one is held responsible. The possible implications of this approach for the game of cricket are elaborated in detail.

10. What is Art?
C.L.R. James

This chapter represents a sustained attempt to restore cricket to its rightful place among the fine arts. James combines a keen insight into the structure and form of cricket (as it is experienced both by the player and by the spectator) with a reinterpretation of the most articulate aesthetic theories of his day to produce a remarkable and intricate case for the inherent artistic quality of cricket. While reproducing the essence of the dramatic in the very form of the central confrontation at the core of the game, James demonstrates how it is the element of style, appreciated in a detached manner, which raises cricket to the level of the visual arts.

11. Cover Driving Gracefully. On the aesthetic appreciation of cricket
Cain Todd

In this chapter I argue against what I call ‘functionalist claims’ that the aesthetic appreciation of cricket, and sport more generally, can be reduced to or is subordinate to the putative purpose of the game, namely winning. Such claims, I contend, rest on a certain dubious Kantian-inspired dichotomy between aesthetic and functionalist values that ought to be rejected. In the course of criticising these views I discuss the nature of aesthetic versus non-aesthetic assessments, including the salient differences and similarities between art and sport; the relationship between the cognitive and affective elements involved in the aesthetic appreciation of cricket; and the normative nature of the aesthetic judgements made. Appealing to the concept of ‘play’ and to Kant’s account of aesthetic appreciation I argue, firstly, that the essential nature of cricket appreciation, qua cricket, just is aesthetic; secondly, that a proper, full appreciation of the game requires a particular type of aesthetic understanding, kinaesthetic and imaginative in nature, which, I suggest, can be illuminated further by appealing to the rich account of CLR James.