ABSTRACT
Test match cricket in the 1980s and 1990s was fiercely aggressive and competitive. The animosities of England–Pakistan test cricket can be seen as a result of white English society’s difficulties in adjusting to the postcolonial epoch. For many Pakistanis the antagonisms surrounding test cricket reflected the racism of English society and perpetuated discourses of white supremacy that had underpinned British imperial expansion. Underlying convictions about Pakistani cheating was the belief that English cricket was morally superior to Pakistani cricket, that Pakistanis were not living up to the standards that the white English had observed in cricket. Assumptions of cheating by Pakistani cricketers and umpires can be seen as continuing these discourses of white English moral superiority. By Pakistanis the widespread belief in English cricket that cheating was endemic in Pakistan cricket was resented and viewed as a perpetuation of the assumptions of white supremacy that had upheld the Empire.
