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Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion - A Cricket Odyssey through Latin America (Paperback)
Loot Price: R417
Discovery Miles 4 170
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Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion - A Cricket Odyssey through Latin America (Paperback)
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Loot Price R417
Discovery Miles 4 170
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South American food, music and culture are cutting a swathe across
the western world. But what if cricket - the quintessential English
sport - were to conquer Latin America? The notion of Brazilians and
Mexicans playing T20 at the Maracana or the Azteca is not as
far-fetched as it sounds. Cricket was the first sport played in
almost every country of the Americas - earlier than football, rugby
or baseball. In 1877, when England and Australia played the
inaugural Test match at the MCG, Uruguay and Argentina were already
10 years into their derby played across the River Plate. The
visionary cricket historian Rowland Bowen reckoned that during the
highpoint of cricket in South America between the two world wars,
the continent could have provided the next Test nation. In Buenos
Aires, where British engineers, merchants and meat-packers flocked
to make their fortune, the standard of cricket was high: towering
figures like Lord Hawke and Plum Warner took star-studded teams of
Test cricketers to South America, and were beaten by Argentina. A
combined Argentine, Brazilian and Chilean team took on the
first-class counties in England in 1932. But this is as much a
social history of grit, industry and nation-building in the New
World. West Indian fruit workers battled yellow fever and brutal
management to carve out cricket fields next to the railway lines in
Costa Rica and by the hulking locks of the Panama Canal. The
legendary BBC commentator Brian Johnston, working for the family
coffee business in Santos, was Brazil's best wicketkeeper until he
was bed-ridden by beri-beri. Cricket was the favoured pursuit of
the blustering Nitrate King of Chile; Emperors in Brazil and Mexico
used the game to curry favour with Europe; General Pinochet's
grandchildren avidly play the game in Chile to this day. But the
fate of cricket in South America is symbolised by Eva Peron
ordering the burning down of the Buenos Aires Cricket Club pavilion
when the club refused to hand over their premises to her welfare
scheme. Mexican bandits, Colombian guerrillas and Argentine
anarchists have kidnapped their country's leading cricketers for
ransom. One of the first Uruguayan cricketers - who scored the
first goal for the national football team - was killed when a
whirlwind carried away the cabin he was sheltering in. This is a
book short on match reports, and long on blood and guts.
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