1. Joseph O’Neill, Netherland
Sports|Ethics|Literature –

2. Joseph O’Neill
Born 1964 in Cork, Ireland. Dad is Irish, Mom is Turkish.
Lived in Ireland, Mozambique, Turkey, Iran, the Netherlands, England, and the U.S.
Wanted to be a poet, gave it up at age 24, became a practicing lawyer in England for a number of years, moved to NYC in 1998 and committed to writing full- time – teaches at Bard College

3. From O’Neill Interviews
"I’ve moved around so much and lived in so many different places that I don’t really belong to a particular place, and so I have little option but to seek out dramatic situations that I might have a chance of understanding.“
“I think it’s naïve to say that a book which describes the situation of rich people must be a book which celebrates that situation, or that there’s a path of novelistic virtue in describing what happens to the poor.”

4. O’Neill Inspiration #1: The Great Gatsby
1925 novel about “The American Dream”
Narrator (Nick Carraway) is a detached observer fascinated by an eccentric man of wealth and questionable business practices (Jay Gatsby) who strives for legitimacy and The American Dream and comes to an untimely end, murdered in a body of water.

5. O’Neill Inspiration #2: CLR James, Beyond a Boundary
CLR James ( ) is an Afro-Trinidadian Marxist writer who revolutionized how we think about the relationship between sport and society
Before Beyond a Boundary (1963), his memoir about cricket, Marxists considered sport a “distraction” that colonial elites used to keep “the masses” from revolution
Before: “Bread and Circus” thesis
After: Social importance of sport goes “beyond the boundary” of the playing field
James argued that sports can also be used as a way for colonized nations to assert themselves and claim independence
Led a successful campaign in 1960 for the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team, Frank Worrell

6. Background on Cricket Originated in southeast England in 16th century
Became England’s national sport in 18th century
Exported with British empire throughout 19th and 20th centuries
2nd most popular sport in the world after Association Football
One of the best sports books of all time: C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (1963)
“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
Perhaps the first book to explicitly connect the structure and form of a sport to its social and political heritage
About the complicated feelings of loving a game imported and imposed to teach “civility” to colonial subjects

7. Consequences of Colonization
West Indies: a group of former colonies in the Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, and Lucayan Archipelago that attempted to create a federated nation in the 1950s and 1960s
Although the political dream died in the 1960s, the countries still continue to field a united cricket team at the international level
Includes Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten, US Virgin Islands

8. Basic Cricket Rules Bowler, Wicket keeper, and rest of defense
Batsman, non-striker, and offensive bench
How to Get Out:
Bowled (21%)
Caught (58%)
Leg Before Wicket (LBW) (12%)
Run Out (6.5%)

9. Bowling Lengths

10. Bowling Spins

11. Sachin Tendulkar Let’s watch some cricket, shall we?
Most famous player in the world: Sachin Tendulkar, former India captain
Famous for getting more than 100 “centuries” in international competition: more than 100 runs before getting out
6 runs for a “home run”; 4 for crossing the boundary on the bounce; anything else is at the runners’ discretion
Net worth $115M
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