Cricket in the Caribbean: From Colony to Capital

Two greatest pundits of West Indian cricket, C L R James and Michael Norman Manley put cricket on a high pedestal in their respective books Beyond a Boundary and History of West Indies Cricket. James is well-known as a Marxist post-colonial intellectual while the latter had an illustrious political career in his native Jamaica. Their books demonstrate how over the years, islands commonly known for sugar plantation, plantain and coffee produced a barrage of cricketing greats. Cricket is a crop of British colonization and in the beginning was fiercely controlled by the colonial elites. As colonial control waned local cricketing figures were produced in the form of the George Headleys and Learie Constantines. Finally through Frank Worrell’s beatification as the first ever black to lead the West Indies team, West Indian cricket sensed a new destiny. And more glories did follow with tales of greater heroes than the greatest of epics.

The cricketers of the fifties and sixties never craved for fame and money. These wholehearted cricketers enjoyed to be out there to give their best shot. When the di Maggios were making big bucks in the US playing baseball, these islanders remained true to their passion for cricket. But these brave sportsmen did a much nobler job in shaping up the identity of the Caribbean people. C L R James shows a gradual shift of power in Windies cricket since the colonial days in his book. White elitist domination gave away to the likes of Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell and Clyde Walcott, not to forget the fierce fast bowlers Wes Hall, Manny Martindale and Herman Griffith with the great all-rounder Learie Constantine. While Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, James’ scholarly neighbors made a more comprehensive splitting of the affects of imperial rule, C L R James meticulously dissects the impact of British rule in the sports. Cricket, he argues was a blessing under imperial constrictions that divided communities of different race and religion and belief in his native Trinidad.

But the fiercely contested cricket matches had another unintended effect on the Caribbean public, he observed. James argued how they learnt to fight though obliquely or allegorically—

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that the clash of race, caste and class did not retard but simulated West Indian cricket. I am equally certain that in those years’ social and political passions, denied normal outlets, and expressed themselves so fiercely in cricket (and other games) precisely because they were games”. (Beyond a Boundary)

The lessons learned from the cricket field were transposed into the field of politics. The blasé heroism of black West Indian cricketers rearticulated and transformed cricket into a symbol of West Indian nationhood. The West Indians saw in the supreme batsmanship of George Headley or the electrifying all-round capacities of Sir Learie Constantine, their hope of a new, self-determined nationhood.

The 1970s & 1980s were the Golden Age of West Indian cricket. Supreme domination was the password for a team consisting of Greenidge, Haynes, Lloyd, Viv Richards, Kalicharan when it came to spilling over the scoreboard with runs while Michael holding, Joel Garner, Malcom Marshall and Colin Croft hunted in pack proving deadlier than the deadliest of hunting dogs to their opponents. The Windies won two consecutive world cups while narrowly losing to India in the third one in 1983. They were more than devastating in test cricket, demolishing opponents for the greater part of the seventies and eighties. Like their predecessors they were faithful servants to the spirit of Calypso cricket.

Another important aspect of cricket was that it enabled different nations to jell together under the iconic name of West Indies in a world fiercely divided on political grounds. In the West Indies team Viv Richards and Andy Roberts hailed from Antigua while Garner, Greenidge, Marshall, Haynes were native Barbadians, Holding and Dujon Jamaicans while Lloyd came from Guyana. Other small island nations were duly represented given the merit of the players.

But these great sportsmen were underpaid yet they had a dogged allegiance to West Indian cricketing glory that goes back to as early as 1890s. James in his book has not included the saga of the warriors led by Lloyd but he sees in Headley, Constantine and perhaps in the pre-industrial father of cricket W G Grace a biblical sign that makes him to argue that cricket shared aesthetic properties with the so-called ‘high’ art forms of classical music, ballet and drama, as well as with the visual fine arts. Given the articulation of Lloyd’s men James rightfully embarks on a supreme theory.

The aesthetic value has gone down the drains with the waning of commitment and spirit since the 1990s. The cricket administration in the Windies has not given proper attention to nurture young talents when there were too many distractions in the form of American sports. Intra-nation feud was a recurrent incident that reared its ugly head and then there was a lack of funding necessary to sustain the game in a changing world. The team failed to make any significant impact in the one day arena and suffered heavy defeats in test matches with constant whitewash by the Aussies in the last few years. Ambrose, Walsh, Lara, Hooper and to an extent Chanderpaul still held sway at times but their efforts often proved insignificant. All these players have retired and now it seems Gayle, Samuels, Sarwan and Edwards would never be able to repeat the feats of their predecessors. International Cricket for them has become a Sisyphean struggle.

True, the team which was a proud beholder of Walsh, Ambrose, Lara and Hooper until recently also suffers because youngsters in the Caribbean are more into NBA and EPL (English premier league), vending machines in a truly post-modern sense. The international governing body of cricket can also be held responsible for the debacle. The cricketing world is cashing on in 20/20 and Kwik cricket.

C L R James would have been profoundly saddened if he had lived to this day. The decline would have pained him but the vulgar involvement of corporate companies would have repulsed him. And so would have Norman Manley who led the anti-colonial struggle in the earlier days of Jamaican anti-colonial movement.