A new photography exhibition explores the relationship between cricket and racial politics. Laura Davis explains

THE list of inequalities seemed endless – inferior healthcare, education, employment; withdrawal of rights to mixed marriages, to university tuition, to voting in elections; separate restaurants, swimming pools and public toilets.

Other countries watched scandalised as the oppressive system of Apartheid rolled out across South Africa, dividing communities, quashing aspirations and stripping anyone non-white of their citizenship.

While United Nations governments imposed trade sanctions, England’s national cricket team refused to tour there.

Yet the game that was now being withheld in peaceful protest had been introduced to the Americas, Europe and Africa as a result of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism.

And as the sport became more entrenched in the African diasporas cultures, it became a tool of resistance to the regime that had ironically first introduced it.

The complicated relationship of cricket to racial politics is the subject of a new photography exhibition opening at Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum on March 19.

Beyond the Boundary explores the connections between cricket, culture, class and politics, and how it can be seen as a legacy of British Imperialism and colonialism as well as, paradoxically, 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.

Developed in collaboration with South African academic Dr June Bam-Hutchison, in association with South African cricket historian Professor Andre Odendaa, Beyond the Boundary illustrates that the transatlantic slave trade holds a deep-rooted legacy that is still evident today.

BEYOND the Boundary is at the International Slavery Museum from March 19 to September 12.