In Thursday’s class, we discussed the novel Netherlands by Joseph O’Neil. In Netherlands, Hans grew up playing both soccer and cricket. Although the novel focused mainly in cricket, I found it interesting how both of these sports are “hiding” in the shadow of an extremely popular American sport in the United States. (Baseball and Football) This also reminds me of a previous class in which we talked about the popularity of NASCAR in America while most of the world enjoys formula one racing and finds format of NASCAR uninteresting.

As we discussed in class, the experience of the cricket players in Netherlands mirror the experience of immigrants in America as both were push to the side and adopt a 2nd class status. The immigrants are getting overlooked in America and are not getting the respect that they deserve similar to cricket and soccer after failing to compete with what was already established in the country. In fact, cricket and soccer can be view as more of sports for immigrants than for Americans, as more than half of the U.S. national men’s soccer team are either immigrants, or children of immigrants. In Netherlands, although Hans was different from his fellow cricket teammates, as he was a six foot five, rich, white European, he still had to go through problems due to his immigrant status.