
The issue of class is woven into the history of cricket like no other sport. As a non-contact game, it was more socially acceptable for the English upper classes to play alongside the working class. It was a shared sporting endeavour but without the potentially awkward physicality of rugby or football. Thus cricket helped forge the powerful English myth of social cohesion across class divisions: the blacksmith bowling to the Lord of the Manor on the village green. Snobbery...