Abstract

This article responds to the suggestion that C.L.R. James’ discussion of cricket, and particularly his defence of the ‘spirit of the game’, represent an ideological blind-spot on his part. James’ autobiographical account of the cricketing field, it is argued, is comparable to Pierre Bourdieu’s account of the ‘fields’ of culture more generally. In particular, James recognized that what was at stake in the defence of cricketing ethics was a defence of the principle by which the sport was able to operate with a relative autonomy from the forces of political and economic power. It was only in this respect that cricket was able to provide, within contexts such as those of the pre-independence Caribbean, a field on which an expressive critique of those very forces of power was possible.