ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1990 Conservative Party ideologist and ideologue Norman Tebbit created a storm of controversy in Britain when he criticized many ‘Asian’ immigrants to Britain for their ‘disloyalty’. It appeared to Mr Tebbit that recent and not-so-recent arrivals to the hallowed shores of Mother England retained a fundamental allegiance to the land of their ‘origins’. What is interesting here is not so much the apparently racist nature of the remarks (for who could expect anything else from the Tories?) but the fact that Tebbit appealed to the so-called ‘cricket test’ to make his point. According to Tebbit, too many Asians failed a fundamental and basic standard of patriotic loyalty:
by cheering for the country they had come from rather than the one they now lived in. ‘It’s an interesting test’ he said. ‘Are you still harking back to where you came from, or where you are?’1
