Date of Award

6-2009

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

George Gmelch

Language

English

Keywords

sports, cricket, Africa, Australia, recreation, social anthropology

Abstract

Sports are an integral part of life in societies throughout the world. Cricket is one of Australia’s two major sports and is a significant aspect of its culture, in a fashion similar to baseball being America’s “national pastime.” Despite its isolation, Tasmania, the small island state of Australia, shares the same mania for cricket as mainland Australia. While in Tasmania for ten weeks interning with the Tasmanian Cricket Association (TCA), I studied the role of cricket in the day-to-day lives of Tasmanians, from the pervasive television, newspaper, and the radio coverage, to pick-up cricket games as a popular leisure time activity. I also looked at the structure of Tasmania's cricket development program. The TCA has many programs set up to attract both the devoted cricketer, and the non-traditional, casual player -- beach cricket, disabled cricket, and street cricket, among others. This paper will also briefly compare how Australian cricket and American baseball differ from one another and how they are similar to one another.

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