England’s Barmy Army

Abstract

This article examines a group of English cricket supporters known as the Barmy Army which explicitly and self-consciously challenges the traditions of spectatorship in English cricket. Following a discussion of who the Barmy Army are and a description of the distinctive characteristics of the style of their support, we seek to examine the factors which have led to the group’s development at this particular time and in this specific sporting context. The article argues that in order to understand why the Barmy Army arose and why it has had such a significant impact on the game we must consider: a) society-wide processes such as time-space compression and the development of ‘New Laddism’; b) sports-wide processes such as changes in football and in football supporter cultures; and c) sport-specific processes such as cricket’s economic development and the internationalization of the game. The article concludes by suggesting that the Barmy Army represent a qualitatively new form of English national identity, that its behavioural style involves a blurring of traditional class-based forms of spectatorship, and that the influence wielded by this small, deviant, group indicates the relatively limited nature of the cricketing establishment’s power.