A Game Sustained

5 Introduction For a game that is relatively simple, cricket has provoked its fair share of debate about whether it might be wrong to play in certain circumstances. Questions of when cricket should or should not be played, against whom it was unacceptable to compete and, ultimately, whether it should be played at all, have featured during the game’s history. For example: - From the early days of cricket, many believed it was wrong to play on a Sunday, and considerable efforts were made by the authorities to prevent it on the grounds that games undermined the spiritual purpose of the day. Prosecutions and fines were common in the 19 th century. - From the 1960s to the early-1990s, playing in Apartheid- era South Africa and against South African teams was a highly controversial matter. Protests against the planned 1970 South African cricket tour of England were followed by an international sports boycott. - After war was declared in 1914 those who played and watched sport in England were faced with the ethical dilemma of whether it was acceptable to engage in public sport at a time when fellow countrymen were involved in battle. Many felt it was inappropriate and in his history of wartime cricket in the Bradford League, Tony Barker notes that the participation of many great cricketers in the game during the period has often been glossed over by their biographers. 1 In each case, opposition was driven by a strong belief that there was something far more important than playing sport – respect for religion, a desire to show clearly that normal relations were not possible with a country with an abnormal policy of racial segregation, and a sense that it was improper to enjoy oneself at a time of war. Times and attitudes change however, and the domestic Sunday league began in England and Wales in the late 1960s. And, with the abolition of apartheid in the early 1990s, South Africa re- entered normal international cricket. The ethical dilemmas