Connecting cricket with the imperialist past

Nov 23, 2015 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I note, quite regrettably, that the sole ex-Test Match cricketer on the CARICOM CRICKET COMMITTEE is Deryck Murray. If the entire Anglo-Caribbean – generally – the post-imperialist Caribbean, and CARICOM – specifically – want to forge a West Indies cricket identity away from an horrifically destructive imperialist past, would it not be reasonable to do so by assigning enormous responsibility for forging just such an identity to ex-test match cricketers such as Everton Weekes, Vivian Richards, Garfield Sobers, Lance Gibbs, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Michael Holding, Alvin Kallicharran, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Colin Croft, and Curtly Ambrose! Yet, in early November, 2015, a CARICOM CRICKET COMMITTEE tables a report constructed by four people, only one of whom is an ex-test match cricketer. To this exclusion I say, loudly, boldly, explicitly; shame on you CARICOM!
I continue casting my exploratory eyes on the Committee’s claim that cricket is an economic subsector of a multibillion dollar sporting and business industry, an industry which has been transformed and modernised substantially within Australia and Britain.
While assuming that there is reason to such a claim I must add: despite the transformation and modernisation neither has England nor Australian Test Match teams over the last thirty nine years been able to come anywhere close to matching the sterling attainments of West Indies Test Match teams led by Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards who were responsible to Board Presidents administering Caribbean cricket at a time when cricket was not part of the multibillion dollar industry. West Indies’ attainments under Rohan Kanhai, captains, Lloyd, Richards, and Richardson, for well over a decade have not been matched by England and Australia.
None of these teams, during the multibillion dollar industrial period, has matched West Indies. Expressed differently, I am stating, explicitly, that, in this grand industrial period with a plethora of computers and other machines used ostensibly to elevate playing standards, neither has Australia nor England reached the standards attained by Lloyd, Richards, Richardson, and their Board bosses, all of whom resided within some of the poorest developing societies.
There is, clearly, a diminution in test match cricket standards, in Australia and England. West Indies societies, among the poorest of the poor, are not the technologically advanced, capitalistically prosperous, rich locations inhabited by English and Australian Test Match players and their Board chieftains.
Rather interestingly, it is England and Australia, well before the multibillion dollar industrial cricket era that “ruled the cricket world” – to borrow words from Mr. David Rudder – but did so with anachronistic administrative structures. Captains, Bradman, Hammond, Yardley, Morris, Hassett, Brown, Hutton, Johnson, Benaud, May, Dexter, Simpson, Smith, Illingworth, Lawry, and Chappell, were all leading England and Australia test match teams when cricket was not a multibillion dollar industry. Neither did they nor their administrators have any visions about transforming cricket into a multibillion dollar industry.
Today, England and Australia, very capitalistically prosperous and rich societies – rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly –  are controlled by politicians, economic experts, and corporate titans who do not question the contemporary global socio-economic inequities rooted in European imperialism which gave birth to the multibillion dollar industrial period noted by the CARICOM CRICKET COMMITTEE.
These titans, experts, and politicians are, in fact, some of the staunchest, most assertive and strident supporters of the link between imperialism and the period. To the extent that CARICOM and the CRICKET COMMITTEE representing the regional body are committed to removing inequities and, presumably operate with a mandate from leaders and citizens of independent Caribbean states, for the purpose of constructing modes of socio-economic organisations different to those imposed by imperialists and their successors, is it not foolhardy for the COMMITTEE to insist upon: reshaping West Indies cricket within the bedrock of a global corporate business world?
If there is one matter in the COMMITTEE report with which I find favour, it is in regard to Board dissolution. Such dissolution would, however, be vacuous and meaningless, if it is not accompanied by moves to infuse, at all levels,  delivery of education, a public good, as a significant resource within which links between world cricket and everyday life in the Caribbean are explored rigorously and systematically.
I wish to begin closure to my arguments against the CARICOM COMMITTEE by noting: the COMMITTEE states, explicitly, that it has no issue with individual Board officials in leadership roles. Its principal focus is on what it terms a structural issue. From my standpoint, reference to a structural issue is, without doubt, reference to a cultural problem. I cannot identify anything in the report about the significance of Caribbean cultures. Yet, if CARICOM AND the COMMITTEE are supposed to be operating within a post-imperialist setting, should such cultures not be paramount to dealing with the structural issue?
William Walcott,
Ontario, Canada

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