Snakes alive! Playing cricket in Latin America

Cricket in Latin America sounds like an oxymoron. Yet in almost every country in the region willow was hitting leather before feet were kicking pigs’ bladders. England vs Australia, first played in 1877, may be cricket’s iconic series, but the Ashes cedes ten years of history to the contest between Argentina and Uruguay — the rivalry of the River Plate.

In Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion, James Coyne and Timothy Abraham, cricket journalists with a fondness for Latin America, travel from Mexico to Argentina with bat in rucksack and dates with fusty archives. A social history with elements of travelogue, the book tells a story of new horizons and false dawns, as the most English of pastimes tried to drop anchor amid scorpions, populist regimes and general bafflement.

Despite the head start, England’s summer pastime didn’t catch on. In contrast to association football, the Victorian pioneers of cricket in Latin America were more concerned with preserving the game’s quixotic mores than expanding the franchise beyond fellow expats and the local elites, many of whom played at English boarding schools. Not even imperial patronage in the mid 19th century — by Brazil’s emperor Pedro II and Maximilian of Habsburg (he of the execution painted by Manet) could solidify cricketing foundations. Cricket grounds became football stadiums and, with a helping of Yankee neo-imperialism, baseball won the battle for the Caribbean. And in 1947, when Buenos Aires CC (est. 1864) refused to acquiesce with Eva Perón’s sweeping social schemes, she had the pavilion set ablaze.

Fires are not uncommon at Latin American cricket grounds, but they usually serve a more sporting purpose. To dry the wicket after tropical rainstorms, players light kerosene on the venerated strip. Try it yourself the next time some aquaphobic umpire stops play for rain.