BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 06:29 PM

Bears the same kind of relationship to more conventional Cricket that Morris Dancing does to Ballroom Dancing.

Maybe Morris Dancers would be the right people to import it into this country. Someone definitely should do that.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 05:03 PM

Well, I got twenty-five minutes into the film.
Just noted the statement that
the Trobriand scoreboard is
-- a coconut tree branch complete with palm fronds.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 04:40 PM

Just reviewed the first ten or fifteen minutes of Trobriand Cricket.

Jack, they don't discuss score-keeping in those first minutes,
I can tell you that much.
When I get a chance,
I will review later segments of the documentary
and see if score-keeping comes up.

One useful technique is employed in this film,
besides showing footage of Trobriand Cricket games.

A group of villagers has a conversation on camera.
A younger man asks older men -- two men in particular --
in their own language, to comment on
what the game was like when the missionaries brought it
and how the "Villagers" (natives) made changes.
Subtitles provide English translations.
As I say, those first ten or fifteen minutes don't touch on score-keeping.

There are remarks about the natives'/"Villagers'" traditional prowess
in the throwing of spears,
and how spear-throwing techniques changed the way the ball was handled.
Also drastic changes in wickets and stumps.
And instead of a batman running with a bat,
the Trobriand Cricket batman has got designated runners
who run with running sticks.

Oh, I forgot the most essential global change.
Trobrianders threw out the eleven-twelve-member sized cricket teams.

These games were to have traditional ceremonial associations so as to
replace the old forms of fighting and warfare.
Therefore, if a group of people larger then eleven or twelve made an appearance and wanted to play/"fight" against another group,
then there had to be teams on which larger numbers of villagers could play.

The players are all men, and their fantastic costumes
are traditional warrior/fighting dress.
That's for starters . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 03:51 PM

I've always thought it quite remarkable the way people ever worked out that sex and pregnancy had any connection.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 03:48 PM

The Trobrianders are best known through Malinowski's description - according to him, they didn't make any connection between sex and pregnancy. Was their method of keeping score in cricket along the same lines?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 11:44 AM

Looks a great deal more fun than the standard code. And I doubt if they go in for the same kind of cheating.

Roll on the day they send a team for a Test Match. I might even watch it.

Subject: BS: Anyone for Trobriand Cricket?
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 11:36 AM

This was intended as an anthropological documentary when it came out
in the 1970's. I saw it with a live audience at a lecture series in a little lecture hall.

The political bias of it went clear over my head at the time.
I was hugely amused at a lot of the film.

Today, the documentary has a tarnished reputation
as critics have looked at it as a form a propaganda.

Trobriand Cricket, about an hour long