An Ethnography on Cricket and Self

“Days in the Dirt”: An Ethnography on Cricket and Self By Harry Christopher Richard Bowles A thesis submitted to Cardiff Metropolitan University in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2014 Director of Studies: Dr Rich Neil Supervisors: Professor Scott Fleming & Professor Sheldon Hanton Copyright Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with its author. This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. This thesis may be made available for consultation within the university library and may be photocopied or lent to other libraries for the purpose of consultation. Signature of Author..................................................................................... Harry C. R. Bowles Declaration This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signature of Author...................................................... Date............................................................................... STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are explicitly acknowledged in the references. Signature of Author...................................................... Date............................................................................... STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis to be made available for consultation within the university library and for photocopying or inter-library loan and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signature of Author...................................................... Date............................................................................... Table of Contents CHAPTER TITLE PAGE Acknowledgments i Abstract ii Dedication iv CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2 The Research Approach 32 CHAPTER 3 Mr Cricket 64 The Story of a Cricket Aficionado CHAPTER 4 The Cricket Bubble 91 Notes on a Cricketing Lifestyle CHAPTER 5 Lady Cricket 139 From Flirtation to Cohabitation… CHAPTER 6 Finding Your Level 169 Trial and Repudiation of a Cricketing Self CHAPTER 7 Summary of Research 207 CHAPTER 8 Conclusion 230 References 235 APPENDIX A Extracts from Season Handbook (2012) 246 APPENDIX B Example ‘Player’ Blog (2011) 251 APPENDIX C The Evolution of a Research Title 252 APPENDIX D Informed Consent and Information 257 Acknowledgments There are many people I should like to thank who have played their parts in this programme of research, many of whom will not have realised that they have played any part at all. But a Ph.D. is at times all consuming affecting even those who stand on the periphery. Among those involved are of course the people whose roles have been more central, and who I would like to recognise personally for the contributions they have made to the completion of this study. First, I would like to thank Dr Rich Neil and Professor Sheldon Hanton for the encouragement and support they have given from the outset. The faith they have placed in me is (among other things) the reason I have come this far, and I am sincerely grateful for the opportunities they have provided. Furthermore, I wish to thank Professor Scott Fleming for the time and counsel he donated to this research. His input has been invaluable. Turning now to the people whose roles have been less formal, but whose contributions have been just as instrumental. In particular, I would like to thank the crew on-board HMS, The Harbour and The Tug who helped create a life outside the Ph.D. that was joyful to be a part of. Their efforts and patience with me should not go unnoticed, nor those displayed by the many friends and loved ones – both old and new – who have spent the last three and a half years on-call. And finally, I must express a debt of gratitude to the people of this study who took on the burden of accepting me into their lives despite the nuisance this must have caused. Without naming each and every one of you, let this be my thanks to you. i Abstract This study provides a representation of the lived transitional experiences of a group of student-cricketers on a passage toward professional cricket. Set in the local context of a university cricket academy, the investigation focused on players’ adoption of a cricketing role that they used in combination with their structured cricketing environment to explore what it might be like to be professional cricketers. The aim of the research, therefore, was to portray a culturally embedded process of identity-exploration through which a group of young men arrived at a conception of themselves as ‘cricketers’. The data on which the study is based have been drawn from research conducted over twenty seven months from November 2010 to March 2013 where I, as a researcher, became immersed in the research context as an active member of the participant group. The methodological approach of ethnography was used to obtain an insider’s account of the student-cricket experience as seen from the point of view of the actors involved. Application of traditional ethnographic techniques such as participant observation, note taking and unstructured, field-based ‘interviews’ provided the means through which situated, day-to-day experiences were captured and explored. What is presented, therefore, reflects some of the contextual responses to real-life situations experienced by the group and its individuals, mediated through a developing analytical interest in players’ identity engagements with their cricketing environment from the theoretical standpoint of ‘emerging adulthood’ (Arnett, 2000, 2004). Adding to the ethnographic accounts offered within this thesis, the study contributes a conceptual framework that plots players’ transitional pathways through the academy to share the key points of interaction that impinged on individual participants ‘finding their level’ in the game. Through contact and exposure to a cricketing way of life, players’ involvement with the academy saw their cricketing experiences intensify and their attachments to the game transform. This resulted in individuals either accepting or rejecting cricket based on what they came to know about themselves and the game, with the findings of the research helping to ii further understanding on how a group of ‘emerging adults’ engaged with the ‘project’ of their self-identities to reach a point of self-understanding on which to base prospective identity-decisions. iii To Christopher and Elizabeth Bowles. This thesis I owe to you. iv CHAPTER 1 Introduction An Insider to the Context I did not grow up wanting to become an ethnographer. I imagine few do. So how did I get here? How did all this happen? One explanation is that it is something that I ‘slipped into’. But do people really ‘slip into’ things as the idiom concludes? As human beings living in modern, industrialised, capitalist societies we are nurtured to believe that we have choices. Some of which are more trivial than others – but choices nonetheless and the agency to make decisions that will, in some shape or form, influence the lives we ‘create’ for ourselves. We have options available to us, and the freedom to pick and choose. We follow directions. We select our paths. We derail and get back on track, and are influenced by the order and ‘mysterious power’ of social structure (Lemert, 2005, p.106).According to Durkheimian sociology, the powers of social structure constitute the ‘hard facts’ of social life that enable or constrain individual agency (Hughes and Sharrock, 1997, p.31). Indeed, people do a lot to shape their own personal lives, but they do so in the context of large social and cultural realities (Smith, Christoffersen, Davidson and Herzog, 2011). Thus, by way of the interplay between self and society (Mills, 1959), person and context (Erikson, 1968), agency and structure (Giddens, 1990, 1991), we don’t just ‘slip in’. By rejecting the idea of slipping into role, I find myself overriding my instinct to say that it is by chance that I am writing the introduction to my Ph.D. thesis. As a boy I despised homework, kicking and screaming my way through school every time I got stuck trying to get the words out, and as a result I never displayed any particular aptitude for academic work. All I wanted to do was play football in the winter and tennis in the summer, and play a bit of cricket in between. Sport was what I was good at, or so I thought, and I enjoyed it. I still do, and with the opportunity to look back for the purpose of delineating the subjectivities that form part of this research project I am able to piece together some of the fragments of my life’s history 1 that remove the sense of randomness to the person and researcher I have become. For as Corrigan (1979, p.4) pointed out, it is true that other people’s work has an effect on the way in which researchers choose their research problems, ‘but the main set of reasons for choice is to be found in the biography of the researcher’. These fragments, as I have begun to insinuate, principally revolve around education and sport – two domains that are now entwined within this thesis. I was eight years old when my father first took me to Lord’s to watch a Test match. I don’t recall who England were playing, nor do I remember much about the day’s play, but I do remember sitting there staring at my hands, mesmerised by the enormous pair of purple and green wicket keeping gloves he had bought to keep me quiet. It was a crafty bit of parenting and the beginning of our annual pilgrimage to NW8, although at this stage there was still a way to go before cricket became a passion and my number one sporting priority.

Load more