Abstract

This book is the first to focus on the relationship between tourism and cricket. The pattern of cricket as a sport and as a tourist attraction is highly dynamic. This volume examines how cricket as a participant and spectator sport generates diverse tourism to both major and peripheral locations. It looks at the ways in which cricket's extended duration (compared to other sports) creates a different dynamic in terms of visitor-host interaction. It also considers how following cricket as a tourist and a participant causes exposure to unique pressures and results in unique behaviour. The book will appeal to researchers, students and teachers in tourism, sport and leisure.

From Witney Scrotum to the Gabba and from homesickness to nostalgia – a few of the words which frame this exciting book. It takes its readers on travels in time and space, exploring the Barmy Army to cricket in Indonesia. Applying ethnographic and sociological methods Tourism and Cricket is a 'must read' for fans and students of sport, cricket and tourism.

The perspectives on these changes of the game are insightful and intriguing, making Tourism and Cricket: Travels to the Boundary an engaging and enjoyable read. Although scholarly in nature, the book presents an insightful variety of perspectives that engages and would appeal to a wide array of readers. Cricket fanatics would find the different perspectives enlightening and general sports readers would likely find the book to be a most enjoyable read. However, Tourism and Cricket: Travels to the Boundary would also be of interest to sports researchers and would serve as an excellent resource for both undergraduate and graduate level courses that attend to sport, tourism, and leisure.

Tom Baum is Programme Director, Hong Kong University SPACE programmes in Tourism and Hospitality Management at the University of Strathclyde. His research agenda includes: people and work in low skills service work, with a particular focus on the international hospitality and tourism sector as well as human resource development and skills planning and formation, education and training, at a macro (national) and company level.

Richard Butler is a geographer (Nottingham and Glasgow Universities), and taught for thirty years at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and then at the University of Surrey. He has published eighteen books on tourism and over a hundred journal articles and chapters. His main areas of research are tourism destination development, and the sustainability of tourism. He is a former President of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies.

This excellent book presents the reader with a fascinating collection of essays which have been expertly integrated by the craft of Baum and Butler's editorship. They deliver a volume that pushes the boundaries in exploring the diverse manifestations of tourism arising from unique cultural creations of the sport of cricket. This is a must-read for those with interests in the intersections of sport, history, culture, identity and tourism.

Offering perspectives on the links between an international sport and tourism mobilities, the contributors to this book fully engage the reader, combining insightful analyses with typical cricketing humour and irreverence. An excellent read for anyone wishing to appreciate the interdependence of tourism and sport participation.