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BOOK REVIEW: The Sticky Wicket Trilogy
Dr Glenville Ashby
Author explores sanctity of cricket in West Indian Diaspora
By Dr. Glenville Ashby
Sometimes the most profound and meaningful of gifts are inconspicuously wrapped. Sticky Wicket is one such example. It is a weighty literary work, delivered with glib and colour.
In this trilogy, author Ewart Rouse chronicles the rapturous affair that Trinidadian Frederick Watkins has with the game of cricket. Watkins is a retired immigrant living in a tony New Jersey suburb.
He is also manager of Fernwood Cricket Club that attracts fellow immigrants from the British Commonwealth, in droves. Like Watkins, many members devise surreptitious schemes to free themselves from domestic and spousal duties – just to enjoy a game. The conniving is as outlandish, as it is hilarious.
Spousal rifts are commonplace, and Watkin’s choppy but endearing relationship with his wife Maggie is an engaging subplot. But clearly, the enduring and intoxicating love for the sport will heavily tax any relationship.
Interestingly, it is a chance some club members are willing to take.
Book cover of Sticky Wicket. Vol.1
As Watkins ages, he refuses to abdicate control of the team. On one occasion he assembles a motley crew of dilettantes to play against a mercurial Jamaican opponent. Withdrawal from cricket is too painful for Watkins to contemplate. “Cricket is your fix,” he is told.
Volume one of Sticky Wicket ends with late game heroics of ‘old man’ Watkins – a vindication, of sorts. But soon, Watkins and company are confronting more than angry spouses and hostile fast bowlers.
They become mired in a culture war – faced with a sudden and seemingly insurmountable hurdle, as the mayor reassigns the George Washington Middle School Grounds to a Little League soft ball team, for its exclusive use. Cricket is prohibited from Fernwood Park. “That means we have no place to play,” Watkins laments, as the possibility of his ‘irrelevance,’ becomes a reality.
This is where “Wicket” soars. Deftly and effortlessly, the author explores social issues of identity, race, class, politics, and the rights of immigrants. As the protagonist Watkins takes on the establishment – navigating inimical terrain – he must concoct a daring plan to save his two loves – cricket, and his marriage to Gina.
Midway through Rouse’s page-turner, the reader begins to view the game of cricket through the prism of immigrants. Cricket is more than a pastime. It defines the immigrant, and shields him from xenophobia and parochialism. Cricket, according to Watkins, takes on an undeniable existential value, creating a cultural mélange from which he and fellow immigrants draw sustenance.
Cricket succeeds where regional politics in the Caribbean and South Asia has failed. During an intra-club spat, Watkins is cautioned by the new captain Pierre: “First thing we have got to agree on right here and now is that we have to end whatever feelings of insularity exist among us. You are from Trinidad. I am from Antigua, Chong’s from Barbados, and Napoleon here is Jamaican. But we are in America now, and as far as Americans are concerned we are all Jamaicans.” “Or Haitians or Africans,” Chong chimes in.
Indeed, Sticky Wicket is a cleverly and richly crafted work, peppered with humour amid its serious thematic underpinning.
It unearths palpable feelings of nostalgia for readers in the Diaspora. And for the reader unfamiliar with cricket, it may well serve as a fun-filled introduction to the sport. A testimony to the crowning achievement of the author.
Dr Glenville Ashby, literary critic – Caribbean Book Review – [email protected]
Sticky Wicket volumes 1-3
LMH Publishing Limited
Kingston C.S.O., Jamaica
www.lmhpublishing.com
ISBN 978-976-8202-55-0
Ratings****: Highly Recommended
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