cover story
THE INEXTRICABLE LINK BETWEEN CRICKET AND THE DECOLONISATION OF THE WEST INDIES Cricket plays such a significant role in crossed the Atlantic to help rebuild a post- from apartheid South Africa) Tony Greig the lives of West Indians today, but its war Britain. Many of these emigrants were declared his intention to make the West history can be traced back to the white struggling with racism and xenophobia in Indians ‘grovel’. The term ‘grovel’ had plantation owners who imported the the so-called “motherland”. The success of unhappy connotations of repression game from England in the 18th century. their home team could mean the difference and punishment for the players, given As a so-called ‘gentlemen’s game’, the between entering their often-hostile their forefathers’ enslaved pasts. The white colonists ensured that only they workplaces with their heads held high or determination to win against the English themselves had the right to bat and alternatively being subject to a torrent of had never been greater. bowl, whilst their slaves’ role would be to racial abuse if their team lost. Earlier in 1976, Antigua had held merely retrieve the ball from the dense In the mid-1970s, Clive Lloyd, captain of an unsuccessful referendum on sugarcane fields as and when needed. the West Indies team from 1974 to 1985, independence from the United Kingdom, As time went on, the physical strength was extremely unhappy with the West and with that years of hard, enforced labour had Indian cricketers being dubbed “calypso several cricketers”, which implied that the team had given the enslaved people meant their a lack of seriousness and professionalism. sheer power made them rather good at Rightly finding the expression fast bowling. And so, they were eventually condescending and unappreciative of the brought into the game itself. But let’s not talent and determination of the West be fooled by this inclusion. It was tiring to bowl in the heat of the Caribbean sun, and Indians, Lloyd conveyed to his team that they were representing the Black as batsmen were the ones heralded in the Caribbean people, who had been game at that time, the enslaved bowlers were simply used as fodder to provide their repressed for centuries through masters with batting practice. slavery and colonisation. The team Unfortunately, things didn’t change for a was transformed, and they became long time. Despite the abolition of slavery, an irresistible force that few could even in early Test matches between withstand, let alone beat. 1976 was a pivotal moment for the England and the West Indies at the West Indian team. On the cusp beginning of the 20th century, both sides of the Test match between were still predominantly white. England and the West As the subject of decolonisation of Caribbean countries heated up in the 1960s Indies, England cricketer (but and 1970s, cricket took on a whole other dimension for the West Indian people. The crucially team had changed from a white-dominated hailing to a Black-dominated one and in the years before the nations became independent, cricket gave the people hope, escape and self-determination. This wasn’t just the case for those living in the West Indies cricket, at its best, has always region itself. The game been a representation of the hopes and aspirations played a crucial role of the people of the Caribbean and has demonstrated for the Windrush time and time again how small Caribbean nations generation can work together and achieve great things. who had
36
THE CITIZEN
