A Design for Life: Deconstructing the Game’s National Identities

Abstract

The controversies surrounding issues of sport and national identity encapsulated by Norman Tebbit’s infamous ‘cricket test’ quoted above resurfaced in 1999 in England during the cricket World Cup. The support for Pakistan, India and Bangladesh during this tournament from Britain’s Asian communities was significant, and many of these fans were quoted as being only too happy to fail Tebbit’s ‘test’ (Reid, 1999). Whilst for Tebbit and others not just of the political Right, to be English is to identify with, and assimilate into, the dominant white culture, for many British Asians the cricket World Cup offered the opportunity to affirm and display their own cultural and sporting identities.

Which side do they cheer for? It is an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are? I think we have got real problems in that regard.

(Norman Tebbit, April 1990)