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Recreation meant cricket, for in those days, expect for infrequent athletic sports meetings, cricket was the only game. Our house was superbly situated, exactly behind the wicket. A huge tree on one side and another house oD ttre other limited the view of the ground, but an umpire could have stood at the bedroom window. By
From the chair he could also mount on to the wildow-sill and so stretch a groping hand for the books on the top of the wardrobe. Thus early the pattern of my life was set." I was not quite as lucky as CLR James in terms of the location of my bedroom wildow, but the house where I grew up was very close to the grounds ill Port Elizabeth where Graeme Pollock played his league and provincial cricket. And so I came to love cricket. My parents also kept Iarge numbers of books and in time, and encouraged by what I found in James,I came to love reading too. James was born i.n 1901. A century later, I visited I?inidad and decided to go in search of CLR James, author of cricket's greatest book , Beyond a
standing on
B
unapuna at the
beginning of this century was a small town of about 3,00Q inh2bitants, situated eight miles from Port of Spain, the capital city of Ttinidad. Like a-11 towns
and villages on the island, it possessed a recreation ground.
a
chair a small
boy of six could watch practice every afternoon and matches on Saturdays - with matting one pitch could and often did serve for both practice and matches.
When I followed the SouthAfrican team on their tour of the West Indies in 1992, James had been dead for three years. In the course ofhis long and active life, he made a massive
contribution, as an intellectual and actirrist, to the great issues of the century. An active Marxist theorist, he was thrown out of the United States for trying to organise sharecroppers and led the campaign to have FrankWorrell installed as the flrst permanent black captain of West Indies. James' writing was incredibiy
influential all over the world.
oundary.'Ihe extract printed above
After
comprises the flrst few sentences, to
"?ot
1953, James
lived in
the United Kingdom and wrote about cricket for the Manchester Guardian and the Glasgow Herald'
which James brings "his skills", as Mike Brearley explains in a foreword to my well-worn edition, "as novelist, critic and social historian".
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helped shape my views on apartheid, cricket and po'litics. He was at least part of the reason I was writing about cricket on a tour of the Caribbean.
BeyondaBoundarYaPPeared )'
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J CLR JAMES
in 1963. It is an autobiography, a political treatise, a study ofrace
Sad legacy:
and class, al erplanation of the Iink between nationalism and cricket and a polemic on cricket as art. Novelist LouisaYoung listed for Wisden Cricket Monthly some ofits other concerns: literature, empire, mas culinity, ancient Greece, communism, the West Indies, aunts, smail boys, inteliectual rigour and early 2Oth-century Englishness. The book is endlessly fascinating. His demolition of the myth about West Indian cricketing success being based on i gay spontaneity' helped me start to understand racism. James heid up the example of a club in TYinidad, Shannon CC.
outsidethe derelict houseofCLRJames in Tunapuna (right);
Professor Lloyd Best
wordsonthe authort gravestone tromBeyond a Boundary(right middle);and Frank Worrell's equally dilapidated house
(farright)
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"No Australian team," wrote James,
"could teach them anything in relentles s concentration. " Television came to South Africa only in 1976, but sporadic film clips showingViv Richards and his team in action built on what I had absorbed from Beyond a Bourudary and banished forever the idea that black excellence rvas somehow unrelated to disciplhe ald sustained effort. All of this was an exciting prelude to a flrst glimpse of the Savannah, the big expanse of land - now the world's biggest traffic circle - that in James' time hosted several games of club cricket played simultaneously. On the edge of the Savannah the Oueen's Royal College still proudly shows off its Victorian wedding cake faqade. This ls where James had "educated myself into a member of the British middle class r,r'ith literangifts and I had done it in deflalce of all authority". But apan from the Savannah and the school buiiding I could find no other trace of the
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not even in the ton-n's 1ibrary. In the establishment cltadel of the oueen's Park Ova1. there is similarly no sign
OBVIOUSLY
of chicken a-nd chips at'Cyps', a modest eatery on Cipriani Boulevard. James'first book was about Captain Cipriani, the socialist mayor of Porl of Spain who resisted British rule. So, no monuments, but I was forlunate to meet some men who knew the great man. Cyril Austin, James'nephew, had an explanation for the lack of any visible memorial. 64/ thecricketer.com
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literary and political giant's legacy,
of James. The closest I came in Port of Spain to any reminder of CLR was a plate
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"Politically he mashed quite a number of people,"he told me on the telephone. Austln remembered that CLR was revered by people outside the establishment. "We used to have street cars running here and nobody would take a fare [from him]." Ttavellilg out to Tunapuna I heard that'the authorities'had gone to considerable lengths to obliterate his legacy. The James house was siill sta-nding but it was very obviously not a monument and was almost derelict. At ieast I could still see the portentous window, but his political opponents had apparently buiit public buildings on the recreation ground deliberately to spite the legacy of ClR. James had been a supporter of Eric Williams and the People's National Movement (PNM) but they fell out to such an extent that when James returned to Ttinidad to cover the 1 965 tour by the Australians for the Observer andTheTimeshe was put
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stg: under house arrest. At TUnapuna I had the great good fortune to have, as a guide, Professor Lloyd Best. When Best passed away in 2007,tlne research and teaching organisation he ran with such panache was renamed the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. Gracious and tremendously knowledgeable, Best was also a man of strong convictions and, I imagine, a wonderful conversational sparring partner with James. His home country did finalIy honour James. Shortly before his
cleath he was awarded the Trinity Cross. The Oilfield Workers Union organised the funeral and saw to it
that the award went with him into the ground. In congratulating his great friend Learie Constantine on being appointed as a lord in I 969, James wrote that he had'no truck
with lordships, etc'. I was not able to get to the southern town of San Fernando where the
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union has a CLR James Education Centre, but it was interesting to pick the brains of two West Indian players who had met the writer. Over lunch during a Test, Joel Garner admitted to being a bit sceptical at firsr about meeting James, but then ahvavs looked forward to going to Brixton when West Indies were in London. Andy Ganteaume also met James in London when he was part of West Indies' touring team of 1957. When I spoke with Ganteaume, r,r,ho was born in I 92 1 , he also had a vague recollection ofJames as a player for Maple CC on the Savannatr, "as a sort of quickie bowler". Ganteaume was much ciearer in his recollection of seeing Wilton St Hill, one of the heroes of Beyond a Boundary, at the crease. Although Gaunteaume saw St Hill "in deciine", he comprehensively agreed with James's verdict on him as a batsman. "I saw him get a hundred against Maple. Believe me,I am glad I saw it."
James' detailed descriptions of St
Hili's batsmanship resonated with me as a boy because at the time I was in awe of Pollocl<. In Port Elizabeth, as in Port of Spain, "as soon as he started to stride to the wicket everyone stopped what he was doing and paid attention". Ganteaume famously scored a century in the only Test he ever played and then got left out in the next game because space had to be made for a white captain. When the Test series moved to Barbados, I had the pleasure of being shor,tn around by fornerWest Indies batsman, Carlisle Best. As Best described each of Bridgetown's cricket clubs and their historical roots I could hear echoes of Beyond a Boundary: Picl<wick CC with the great stadium catering to the elite, Spartan CC for the black middle-class and the humble facilities of Empire CC for the working man, which nevertheless nurtured the likes of EvertonWeekes,
Worrell and Conrad Hunte - and Best. Surrounded by a noisy boundary of corrugated iron, the Empire CC field is startlingly small. "We play threes and fours here," Best said, "because the field is not big enough for fours and sixes". The house where FrankWorrell grew up is just outside the boundary felice of the Empire CC. \&tlen I saw it in 200I it was dilapidated. I am sad to report that when I was writing this article I looked on the internet for any evidence that something had been done to restore the home of this West Indian cricketing hero. Instead, I found an anicle datedAugust 2014 on the website of Natronnews with the headline,'Rescue plea'. Cricket buffs who want to visit the homes of Worrell or CLR James might have to move quickly. I think I was Iucky to visit when I did. R John Young is a South African
freelance writer
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