Imperial games

Roger Simon points to a piece in the New York Times suggesting that the history of cricket's development as an international game may offer lessons for the promotion of democracy abroad.

It's an interesting idea. As is the article's contention that: "Cricket lost ground in North America because of the egalitarian ethos of its societies." That's a new one on me. But it sounds a lot like the old saw that Americans don't play much cricket because we're temperamentally unsuited to the game.

As I've said before, I think the explanation is simple - cricket withered in the US after 1898 when the British-controlled Imperial Cricket Conference effectively excluded the US team from first-class international competition.

No lesson in democracy there then.