Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum stages exhibition exmaining relationship between cricket and culture

Mar 18 2010 Flintshire Chronicle

THE International Slavery Museum in Liverpool hosts Beyond the Boundary, an exhibition of powerful and emotive photographs exploring aspects of cricket that have not been seen before.

Beyond the Boundary explores the relationship between cricket, culture, class and politics and how it can be seen as a legacy of British imperialism and colonialism and, paradoxically, as a means of resistance against it.

Through photographs featuring cricketers such as Viv Richards, Paul Adams and Basil D’Oliveira, the exhibition celebrates contemporary players who, by playing in the boundary of the cricket pitch, broke the boundaries of racial apartheid.

Despite exclusion from the elite “white game” throughout the Empire, by the second half of the 20th century the West Indies team became the undisputed world champions.

They rode on the wave of nationalism which accompanied political independence in the 1960s, while at the same time apartheid in South Africa isolated their team internationally.

Beyond the Boundary – which can be seen from March 19 to September 12 – illustrates that the transatlantic slave trade holds a deep-rooted legacy that is evident and prevalent today.