ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the social and political progress of English first-class cricket since the Second World War. It focuses on the manifold histories of the English game, in particular those by the American-born Marxist writer Mike Marqusee and the English educationalist Sir Derek Birley, as well as on journalistic accounts and cricket biographies. And Francis Wheen, in his foreword to Marqusee’s book Anyone But England, argued that the Marylebone Cricket Club, for much of its history the stewards of English cricket, ‘who are usually denounced as fossilised reactionaries’ were: Not reactionary enough. Cricket had played an important part in maintaining wartime morale in England. Influential spokespeople such as Rowland Bowen railed against the spectre of professionalism haunting English cricket politics. English cricket authorities were made aware of the increased cricketing prowess and rising political ferment in the West Indies in the late 1940s.
