The American Dream of Chuck Ramkissoon: Cricket in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland

Abstract

Abstract The place of cricket in American sport has been examined in some detail for the late nineteenth century. For the period thereafter, however, the subject has been overlooked, in spite of evident support for the game in various parts of the country at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The appearance in 2008 of Joseph O’Neill’s critically-acclaimed novel Netherland, which places cricket at the center of its New York-based story, prompts the question of whether, in the absence of serious academic work on recent American cricket, we may find something in a work of fiction to help us tackle the topic. The article suggests that we can.