In the introduction to the book I’m reading (about the history of cricket in India) the writer says, essentially, that team sports are a British thing, and that all of the major team sports that are played internationally come from England, except for basketball which is a New England thing. And, I mean, my reaction was that it wasn’t true. But maybe it is…
What are the international team sports? He’s pretty much just talking about international football, cricket, hockey and rugby. I think of baseball as an international sport, but I can totally see why someone in India would think of it as a local sport, like American (gridiron) football, or for that matter lacrosse or hurling. The other team sports in the Olympics are water polo (Scottish), volleyball (New England), handball (Danish, I guess?), and then things that I don’t really consider team sports, such as bobsled and doubles tennis and synchronized swimming. And curling.
I assume the history of which team sports become international is the history of colonialism, but even then: are there no Dutch team sports? None from Portugal or Germany or France? Is it just an accident of history that the English and then the Americans put enough resources into team sports that they dominated the global culture? Plausible, I suppose. Just… odd. And odd that I’ve never thought about it before.
As a side note, another team sport that the writer didn’t mention is polo, which, oddly enough, is the one that evolved in the part of the world that the writer is from. I wonder if he considers it, too, an English sport.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.