Abstract
This chapter focuses on the genesis, method and meaning of kirikiti. It first considers the wider social context and specific social practices—notably customary contests and pastimes—that Samoans drew on as they reimagined cricket. The chapter then turns to kirikiti’s other principal influence—English cricket circa 1880—and traces some of the ways that kirikiti departed from it. In particular, the chapter identifies four principal dimensions of kirikiti’s ‘transcultural’ nature: modes of participation; equipment used and techniques employed; attendant elements and social context and the institution of a forfeit owed to the victor. The chapter concludes by framing kirikiti as an implicit challenge to colonial authority and European claims of superiority, as well as an embodiment of wider contest in contemporaneous Samoa.
For a time all went on very smoothly, but the quiet and serious English style did not suit them long. One by one, innovations of their own and Tongan manufacture crept into the game, until soon nothing remained of cricket, pur et simple, but the practice of one man bowling a ball to another man trying to hit it. All the rest of the proceedings were purely of their own manufacture.
William B. Churchward, My Consulate in Samoa: A Record of Four Years’ Sojourn in the Navigators Islands, with Personal Experiences of King Malietoa Laupepa, his Country, and his Men (London: Richard Bentley and Son: 1887), pp. 143–144
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Notes
- 1.
Anon., ‘CHURCHWARD, William Brown’, in Who’s Who 1914 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1914), p. 395.
- 2.
Churchward, My Consulate in Samoa, pp. 2–3.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 135.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 142.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 143.
- 6.
For extended discussions of this important concept, see Malama Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa: Traditional Authority and Colonial Administration in the History of Western Samoa (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, 1987), pp. 16–20; Nicholas Thomas, In Oceania: visions, artifacts, histories (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 191–195; Galumalemana A. Hunkin, ‘Fa’a Samoa’, in Hilke Thode-Arora (ed.), From Samoa With Love? (Munich: Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2014), pp. 19–25.
- 7.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 17.
- 8.
Nicholas Thomas points out that while the notion of fa’a Samoa certainly existed in pre-colonial settings, it took on a broader social and political meaning with the arrival of papalagi. See Thomas, In Oceania, pp. 192–193.
- 9.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 16.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 11.
Peter Hempenstall, ‘Germany’s Pacific Pearl’ in Hilke Thode-Arora (ed.), From Samoa with Love? (Munich: Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2014), p. 27.
- 12.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 2.
- 13.
Albert Wendt, ‘Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body’, Span 42–43 (1996), pp. 18–19. For further discussion of the concept of va, see also I’uogafa Tuagalu, ‘Heuristics of the Vā’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 4:1 (2007), pp. 108–126; Sa’iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor, ‘Beyond “Migration”: Samoan Population Movement (Malaga) and the Geography of Social Space (Vā)’, Contemporary Pacific 21:1 (2009), pp. 1–32.
- 14.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 22–26.
- 15.
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation (New York: William Morrow, 1928); Margaret Mead, Social Organization of Manua (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1930).
- 16.
Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, p. 72.
- 17.
For an overview of Freeman’s work and his attitudes towards Mead and her research, see Peter Hempenstall, Truth’s fool: Derek Freeman and the war over cultural anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017).
- 18.
Derek Freeman, The Social Structure of a Samoan Village Community (Canberra: Target Oceania, 2006), p. 34. Although it was released in 2006, this publication was of Freeman’s 1948 thesis, the first-ever publication thereof.
- 19.
Ibid., pp. 126–128.
- 20.
Bradd Shore, Sala’ilua: A Samoan Mystery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
- 21.
Ibid., pp. 198–201.
- 22.
Ibid., pp. 201–202.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 199.
- 24.
John Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (London: John Snow, 1865), p. 138.
- 25.
Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas (New York: Scribner’s, 1896), p. 33.
- 26.
John B. Stair, Old Samoa, or, Flotsam and jetsam from the Pacific Ocean (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1897), pp. 137–138.
- 27.
George Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians: their life-histories described and compared (London: Macmillan and Co., 1910), pp. 340–341; see also Stair, Old Samoa, p. 138.
- 28.
Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, pp. 229–230.
- 29.
Mead, Social Organization of Manu’a, pp. 109–110, 149.
- 30.
Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa, p. 36.
- 31.
Shore, Sala’ilua, p. 227.
- 32.
Penelope Schoeffel, ‘Daughters of Sina: A Study of Gender, Status and Power in Western Samoa’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1979), pp. 328–329.
- 33.
Shore, Sala’ilua, p. 199.
- 34.
For information on Samoan games, see Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1930), pp. 542–574; George Turner, Samoa: A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before (London: The London Missionary Society, 1884), pp. 124–134; Llewella Pierce Churchill, ‘Sports of the Samoans’, Outing 33:6 (March 1899), pp. 562–568; Augustin Krämer, The Samoa Islands: Material Culture, vol. 2, trans. Theodore Verhaaren (Auckland: Polynesian Press, 1995), pp. 381–391; Stair, Old Samoa, pp. 132–141.
- 35.
Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, pp. 542–544, 566–570; Richard Moyle, ‘An account of the game of Tagati’a’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 79:2 (1970), pp. 233–244.
- 36.
For pigeon netting, see Churchward, My Consulate in Samoa, pp. 139–141; Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, pp. 542–544; Kipeni Su’apa’ia, Samoa: The Polynesian Paradise (New York: Exposition Press, 1962), pp. 60–61.
- 37.
Moyle, ‘An Account of the Game of Tagati’a’, p. 233.
- 38.
Krämer, The Samoa Islands, p. 382.
- 39.
For accounts of tagati’a, see Laulii Willis, The Story of Laulii (San Francisco: Jos. Winterburn, 1889), pp. 144–146; Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, pp. 566–570; Moyle, ‘An account of the game of Tagati’a’, pp. 233–244.
- 40.
The boundary line was first mentioned in the 1884 MCC Code of Laws, although they were certainly in use for many years beforehand, probably to protect prominent spectators from injury.
- 41.
John Simons, ‘The ‘Englishness’ of English Cricket’, Journal of Popular Culture 29:4 (1996), pp. 41–50.
- 42.
Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket (London: Aurum, 1999), p. 48.
- 43.
Ibid., pp. 64–67.
- 44.
According to Law 1, a game may by agreement be played between sides of more than, or fewer than, eleven players. Only eleven players are permitted to field at any one time, however.
- 45.
Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, p. 2, see also note #2 at pp. 365–366.
- 46.
A Ladies Cricket Club was formed at Apia in October 1922 but thereafter there is no record of its activities. See ‘Local and General’, Samoa Times, 20 October 1922, p. 5.
- 47.
Joseph H. Merrill, Journal entry for 18 January 1892, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB) 717: Merrill, Joseph H.—Journals, 1890–1903, Micro-MS-Coll-08-0717, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra.
- 48.
Joseph Hatten Carpenter, Diary—14 January 1892, Diary 1891–1892 (vol. 2), MSS 349, Mormon Missionary Diaries (MMD), L. Tom Perry Special Collections Brigham Young University, http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/MMD/id/9738 (accessed 25 February 2014).
- 49.
Donald Sloan, Polynesian Paradise: An Elaborated Travel Journal, Based on Ethnological Facts (London: R. Hale, 1941), p. 215.
- 50.
As with many aspects of kirikiti, the number of runners involved at any one time seemed to vary from match to match. See F.W. Christian, ‘Cricket As She Is Played in Samoa’, Star, 15 May 1896, p. 4; ‘A.W.T.’, ‘A Samoan Cricket Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1901, p. 7.
- 51.
A.W. Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa and the Islands of the South Seas’, in P.F. Warner (ed.), Imperial Cricket (London: London & Counties Press Association, 1912), p. 392.
- 52.
‘Cricket’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 14 January 1893, p. 2.
- 53.
Karl. W. Brewer, Armed with the Spirit: Missionary Experiences in Samoa (Provo, Utah: Young House, 1975), p. 87.
- 54.
George Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 340.
- 55.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 20 May 1893, p. 2.
- 56.
Robert Ward Tate, Diary—14 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44: Diary, Apr-Jul 1919, Robert Ward Tate Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), Wellington.
- 57.
While early papalagi accounts featured various sporting endeavours, the only mention of female participation comes from George Turner, who described women engaging in boxing contests. Turner, Samoa: A Hundred Years and Long Before, p. 126. Sources suggest most games were coded as male activities. For instance, Kipeni Su’apa’ia recalled that tagati’a was “played between the villages by all the male adults. The women are allowed to join in dancing and cheering”. Su’apa’ia, Samoa: The Polynesian Paradise, p. 61. Even legends and proverbial sayings feature male protagonists playing customary games. See, for example, E. Schultz and Brother Herman, ‘Proverbial expressions of the Samoans (Continued)’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 59:3 (1950), pp. 226–227.
- 58.
For accounts of juggling games played by women and girls, see Stair, Old Samoa, p. 138; Krämer, The Samoan Islands, p. 382; Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, p. 563.
- 59.
Niel Gunson, ‘Sacred Women Chiefs and Female ‘Headmen’ in Polynesian History’, Journal of Pacific History 22:3 (1987), p. 141. There is an extensive literature on gender in Samoa, especially regarding the notion of feagaiga—a word that refers to the covenant of reciprocal obligation between a brother and sister. See Penelope Schoeffel, ‘The Samoan Concept of Feagaiga and Its Transformation’ in Judith Huntsman (ed.), Tonga and Samoa: Images of Gender and Polity (Christchurch: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 1995), pp. 85–106; Latu Latai, ‘Changing Covenants in Samoa? From Brothers and Sisters to Husbands and Wives?’, Oceania 85:1 (2015), pp. 92–104.
- 60.
Willis, The Story of Laulii, p. 145.
- 61.
See, for example, Merrill, Journal entry 1 January 1892, PMB 717; ‘Local and General News’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 20 May 1893, p. 2.
- 62.
For discussion of the aualuma before and after the arrival of Christianity in Samoa, see Schoeffel, ‘Daughters of Sina’, pp. 433–459; Latai, ‘Changing Covenants’, pp. 95–98.
- 63.
See, for example, Felix M. Keesing, ‘The Taupo System of Samoa: A Study of Institutional Change’, Oceania 8:1 (1937), p. 13; F.J.H. Grattan, An Introduction to Samoan Custom (Apia: Samoa Printing and Publishing, 1948), p. 110.
- 64.
In 1919, for instance, Colonel Robert Ward Tate witnessed a women’s match in which the team’s leader led her side in a series of comedic choreographed manoeuvres. Tate, Diary—14 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL. Jeanette Mageo, who conducted fieldwork in Samoa in the 1980s, observed this kind of bawdy humour was only permissible in the context of girls’ cricket games. On each side, one player would make choreographic jokes to be imitated by her team. This role was frequently occupied by a fa’afafine—a male who dresses, acts and identifies as a woman. Jeanette Mageo, ‘Male Transvestism and Cultural Change in Samoa’, American Ethnologist 19:3 (1992), pp. 443–459.
- 65.
Claire Westall, ‘But it’s more than a game. It’s an institution’ in John Storey (ed.), The Making of English Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 32–33.
- 66.
Allen Guttmann, From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
- 67.
The number of balls in an over changed to five in 1889, then to six in 1900.
- 68.
Hugh Barty-King, Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers: The History of Cricket Bat and Ball Manufacture (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1979).
- 69.
Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, pp. 39–40.
- 70.
Derek Birley, The Willow Wand—Some Cricket Myths Explored (London: Aurum Press, 2000), pp. 20–21.
- 71.
The qualifier ‘in theory’ is necessary, as this account of cricket in the late nineteenth century does not capture the distinctive modes of play that emerged away from English public schools and county grounds. This was especially true in British colonies, where early cricket often featured ‘rough’ techniques and distinctly indecorous conduct. For an example in the Australian colonies, see James Scott, Early cricket in Sydney, 1803 to 1856, eds. Richard Cashman and Stephen Gibbs (Sydney: New South Wales Cricket Association, 1991).
- 72.
For an account that stresses this feature of kirikiti, see A.W.T., ‘A Samoan Cricket Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1901, p. 7.
- 73.
Robert Gibbings provides the best account of this process. Robert Gibbings, Over the Reefs (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1948), p. 77.
- 74.
Tate, Diary—14 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL.
- 75.
V.A. Barradale, Pearls of the Pacific: Being Sketches of Missionary Life and Work in Samoa and Other Islands in the South Seas (London: London Missionary Society, 1907), p. 78.
- 76.
Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, p. 396.
- 77.
Ibid., p. 393; F.W. Christian, ‘Cricket As She Is Played In Samoa’, Star, 15 May 1896, p. 4.
- 78.
Tasileta Te’evale, ‘We are what we play: Pacific peoples, sport and identity in Aotearoa’, in Cluny Macpherson, Paul Spoonley and Melani Anae (eds.), Tangata o te moana nui: The evolving identities of Pacific peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press: 2001), p. 219.
- 79.
Gibbings, Over the Reefs, p. 78.
- 80.
Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), pp. 144–145.
- 81.
Dominic Malcolm, ‘Cricket Spectator Disorder: Myths and Historical Evidence’, Sports Historian 19:1 (1999), p. 22.
- 82.
Note that this asserted norm was not necessarily observed elsewhere in the Empire, or indeed in some parts of England. ‘Barracking’ and other forms of active crowd behaviour were common in Yorkshire, Australia and the Caribbean. See Mike Huggins and Jack Williams, Sport and the English, 1918–1939: Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 106–107.
- 83.
Malcolm, ‘Cricket Spectator Disorder’, p. 25.
- 84.
George French Angas, Polynesia: a popular description of the physical features, inhabitants, natural history, and productions of the Islands of the Pacific (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1866), pp. 275–277; Churchill, ‘Sports of the Samoans’, p. 565; Turner, Samoa, A Hundred Years and Long Before, p. 29.
- 85.
Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, p. 574.
- 86.
Moyle, ‘An account of the game of Tagati’a’, p. 237.
- 87.
Te Rangi Hiroa, Samoan Material Culture, pp. 567–568.
- 88.
Anon., ‘Individual and Family Life in Samoa’, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle 30:2 (Sept 1852), pp. 563–565.
- 89.
Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa, pp. 391–395.
- 90.
Gibbings, Over the Reefs, p. 80.
- 91.
Tate, ‘Diary—17 May 1919’, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL.
- 92.
E. Brien Blake, ‘Why Samoa?’, p. 16, MS-Papers-4879-076: Why Samoa?/by the Rev E Brien Blake, in Grattan, Frederick James Henry, 1909–1983: Papers relating to his government service in Western Samoa, ATL.
- 93.
George Pratt, A Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language, with English and Samoan Vocabulary (Papakura: R. McMillan, 1984), originally published 1893, p. 182.
- 94.
In modern kirikiti, this is analogous to the faiaoga , who leads the cheering and ‘sledging’ in a team.
- 95.
‘Christianity in Samoa’, West Australian, 9 September 1931, p. 11.
- 96.
Tate, Diary—17 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL.
- 97.
‘A Trip to the South Seas’, Supplement to the New Zealand Herald, 8 February 1896.
- 98.
Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, p. 393.
- 99.
‘Sports and Pastimes’, Free Lance, 21 November 1914, p. 19; ‘Cricket in Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 12 February 1924, p. 4.
- 100.
For examples of violence and property destruction arising from kirikiti matches, see ‘Amenities of Samoan Cricket’, Samoan Weekly Herald, 25 March 1893, p. 2; ‘An Extraordinary Affair at Samoa’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 March 1900, p. 8; and Nelson Eustis, Aggie Grey of Samoa (Adelaide: Hobby Investments, 1979), pp. 89–90.
- 101.
Delabere P. Blaine, An encyclopaedia of rural sports: or a complete account, historical, practical, and descriptive, of hunting, shooting, fishing, racing, and other field sports and athletic amusements of the present day (London: Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1840), p. 134.
- 102.
Denis Molyneux, ‘Disciplining Recreation in Colonial South Australia: Constraints, Controls and Conventions’ (PhD diss., University of Adelaide, 2009), p. 98.
- 103.
For concerns over time wasting, see Tate, Diary—14 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL. For papalagi alarm at gambling, see George Cousins, ‘The Past and Present of Samoa’, The Sunday at home: a family magazine for Sabbath reading 1835 (29 June 1889), pp. 410–411.
- 104.
Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, pp. 11–13, 23. See Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, ‘Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1270 to Present’, MeasuringWorth, https://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/ (accessed 11 April 2019).
- 105.
Malcolm, ‘Cricket Spectator Disorder’, p. 32. Emphasis is my own.
- 106.
Keith A. Sandiford, ‘Cricket and the Victorian Society’, Journal of Social History, 17:2 (1983), p. 303.
- 107.
George Pratt, A Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language, p. 107.
- 108.
Stair, Old Samoa, p. 137.
- 109.
Turner, Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before, pp. 131–132.
- 110.
Moyle, ‘An Account of the Game of Tagati’a’, p. 239.
- 111.
Willis, The Story of Laulii, p. 145.
- 112.
Richard E. Delaney, ‘Among the South Sea Islanders’, Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 72:1 (July 1918), pp. 22–23.
- 113.
Brewer, Armed With the Spirit, pp. 86–87.
- 114.
Carpenter, Diary—14 January 1892, MSS 349, vol. 2, MMD.
- 115.
Sloan, Polynesian Paradise, pp. 219–221.
- 116.
F.W. Christian, ‘Cricket As She Is Played In Samoa’, Star, 15 May 1896, p. 4.
- 117.
Llewella Pierce Churchill, Samoa ‘Uma, where life is different (New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 1902), p. 229; Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, pp. 394–396.
- 118.
See, for example, Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, p. 395; Tate, Diary—24 May 1919, MS-Papers-0264-44, ATL; George Irwin, ‘Samoan Odyssey—1’, Blackwood’s Magazine 293 (March 1963), pp. 225–226.
- 119.
Even if players and spectators did not always live up to cricket’s exacting standards of conduct, that they should do so was almost universally accepted. See Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England, pp. 144–145; Wray Vamplew, ‘Sports Crowd Disorder in Britain, 1870–1914: Causes and Controls’, Journal of Sport History 7:1 (1980), pp. 11, 15–16; Sandiford, ‘Cricket and the Victorian Society’, pp. 303–317.
- 120.
Thomas Berry Cusack-Smith, Diary—7 to 14 May 1891, MSX-2759: Diary (1891), Cusack-Smith, Thomas Berry (Sir), 1859–1929: Papers, MS-Group-0066, ATL.
- 121.
Quinn, ‘America’s South Sea Soldiers’, p. 274.
- 122.
Greg Ryan, ‘Few and Far Between: Māori and Pacific Contributions to New Zealand Cricket’, Sport in Society, 10:1 (2007), p. 83.
- 123.
A.W.T., ‘A Samoan Cricket Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1901, p. 7.
- 124.
Andrew Smith, ‘Beyond a Boundary’ (of a ‘Field of Cultural Production’): Reading C.L.R. James with Bourdieu’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23:4 (2006), p. 105.
- 125.
Abraham Bass, cited in ‘The Game of Cricket’, The Sporting Review, October 1865, p. 296.
- 126.
Richard Moyle, ‘An Account of the Game of Tagati’a’, pp. 235–239.
- 127.
Sloan, Polynesian Paradise, pp. 216–217; Lewis R. Freeman, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, The Mid-Pacific Magazine, April 1922, p. 347.
- 128.
‘Affray in Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 29 November 1919, p. 12.
- 129.
Mahaffy, ‘Cricket in Samoa’, p. 394.
- 130.
F.W. Christian, ‘Cricket as She is Played in Samoa’, Star, 15 May 1896, p. 4.
- 131.
See, for example, A.W.T., ‘A Samoan Cricket Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1901, p. 7; Frank Lenwood, Pastels from the Pacific (London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1917), p. 66.
- 132.
Carpenter, Diary—14 March 1893, MSS 349, vol. 3, MMD.
- 133.
Churchward, My Consulate in Samoa, pp. 147–148; John Charlot ‘The War between the Gods of ‘Upolu and Savai’i’: A Samoan Story from 1890’, Journal of Pacific History 23:1 (1988), p. 82.
- 134.
F.J.H. Grattan, An Introduction to Samoan Custom (Apia: Samoa Printing and Publishing, 1948), p. 124.
- 135.
See Marie Fraser In Stevenson’s Samoa (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1895), p. 35; ‘A Trip to the South Seas’, Supplement to the New Zealand Herald, 15 February 1896.
- 136.
E. Schultz and Brother Herman, ‘Proverbial expressions of the Samoans (Continued)’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 59:1 (1950), p. 41.
- 137.
John Charlot, ‘The War between the Gods of ‘Upolu and Savai’i’, p. 80.
- 138.
Ibid.
- 139.
Brian Stoddart, ‘Other Cultures’ in Brian Stoddart and Keith A. Sandiford (eds.), The Imperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 143.
- 140.
Schoeffel, ‘Daughters of Sina’, pp. 498–499.
- 141.
Te’evale, ‘We are what we play’, p. 220.
- 142.
Several postcolonial studies scholars have explored how cricket’s meaning was challenged through imperial expansion. See, for example, Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), especially pp. 3–7; Neil Lazarus, Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), especially pp. 163–164.
- 143.
This is not to say that the objectives of missionaries and officials were completely in accordance with Trobrianders’ intentions, of course. According to H.A. Powell, who wrote about the game in the 1950s, the local version of cricket did at first attract official attention following reports of matches lasting ‘weeks at a time’. The game was soon suitably tempered, however. See H.A. Powell, ‘Cricket in Kiriwina’, The Listener 48:1227 (4 September 1952), p. 384.
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Sacks, B. (2019). From cricket to kirikiti. In: Cricket, Kirikiti and Imperialism in Samoa, 1879–1939. Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27268-5_3
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