This paper uses Gramsci’s social theory to examine cricket in India and South Africa, as a contestation of civics, both in terms of their histories and popular cultures. In the uneasy balance of society (hegemony), and from within the cricket imaginary, there emerges a non-reductionist interpretation of struggle, in contrast to Laclau and Mouffe’s claims that the Italian theorist was class reductionist. This is done by appropriating Gramsci’s concepts, of ‘war of position and manoeuvre’, ‘civil society’, ‘popular culture’ and ‘hegemony’, that are all intertwined in defining sites of struggle, and in constructing the popular imaginary as one element of the construction of society.