MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 9 May 1997.
Online here https://web.archive.org/web/20120416011318/http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/fanflame.htm.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
I continue to be amazed at the nonsense men are capable of when they seek to defend the indefensible. At such times their very language loses all trace of character and descends to the point where it hardly deserves the name writings.
I came across one such very recently. Not that one does not find it here. But this from Barbados shocked me. I was outraged. It did not come from any letter writer or columnist. It came from an Editor. In an editorial. In an editorial Comment from Barbados. Barbados which prides itself as the centre of West Indies cricket, the fount, so to speak of West Indian cricket lore and knowledge. Mark you, I would be the first to give pride of place in West Indies cricket to Barbados. But here is what the Barbados Editor wrote in the Saturday edition of the Nation a fine Barbadian paper, normally. But here is what the Sun on Saturday May 3, 1997 had to say in its Editorial Comment. It appeared under the headline Keeper’s a Special role. I will quote the Editorial in full. Here goes.
“Cricket fans in the Caribbean are going crazy, crazy, crazy.
“Boatloads of Grenadian cricket fans made this journey to neighbouring St Vincent for the Third One-day International between India and the West Indies, not to watch the game, but to protest certain team inclusions.
“That is lawlessness.
“The Grenadians feel their man, Junior Murray should be a member of the West Indies team playing in the series. And that Rawle Lewis got a raw deal too.
“We do not think that they are doing their candidate for the wicket-keeping job much good by so protesting.
“Cricket fans recognise the dilemma of the selectors in this matter. They also recognise the tremendous impact which Murray’s batting had on the team’s efforts in Australia recently.
“But the Grenadians seem not to recognise that the glove-work of their man rates poorly next to his replacement, Courtney Browne and indeed, that of David Williams.
“If the selectors now determine that the value of Murray’s batting does not outweigh the value of his wicket-keeping they have made a wise decision.
“We believe that wicket-keeping is too specialised a role to be trifled with. Chopping and changing gives no one the confidence to develop in a job which requires tremendous concentration.
“Selection must now be made by well recognised criteria and not on an insular basis.
“Settle down fans.”
I was really trying to find the origin of this. Was it Barbados’ attempt to imitate the slapdash writing that passes for journalism in most of Britain’s tabloids? It probably is that in part.
Was it part of a sense of Barbados’ natural superiority in matters related to Cricket. And therefore any challenge to a Bajan is necessarily “crazy, crazy, crazy”? There is some of that too.
What is unpardonable is the idea that protest, in and of itself, is definitely “lawlessness.” Peaceful protest at that!
The authorities have decided that Bajan Courtney Browne is the keeper, a position which “requires tremendous concentration” which we must presume, is a quality, which a Grenadian, a small islander, cannot lay claim to, let alone exhibit. Reading that, an outsider unfamiliar with West Indies cricket would get the impression that the “glove-work” of Courtney Browne is far superior to that of Grenadian Junior Murray. That the “lawless” Grenadians who came “in boatloads” from Grenada to St Vincent “not to watch the game” but to protest came to denounce a Godfrey Evans or a Jackie Hendricks of wicketkeeping. Worse they pitting and championing a pygmy of a keeper against one of the known giants of the art and science of keeping in Courtney Browne.
First of all, all reasonable judges of the game agree on one thing. Neither Junior Murray nor Courtney Browne are great exponents of the business of wicket-keeping. All agree that both can trade places, without any loss of skill to the West Indies team.
Indeed, it is to Murray’s credit that he has never been involved in the fiasco, which Browne, unfortunately has visited upon the West Indies. The simple catch Browne dropped off Steve Waugh on 42, with Waugh going on to get 200, and thus contributing heavily to West Indies defeat against Australia in the decisive fourth Test in Jamaica in 1995.
Nor has Murray been involved in Browne’s unforgettable attempt to catch a simple ‘skier’ off Tendulkar, which he settled under with both gloves, and allowed to fall over his shoulder. In the history of cricket there could hardly be worse. Those two were Browne’s worst but indelible moments. Even a Bajan would agree that no one wanted to see Browne keeping again for West Indies after the first two Tests Down Under last year.
Yet this Editor, in his studied comment, behaves as if Courtney Browne is the non-pareil of keepers, outstanding for his glove-work.
Indeed says this Editor “the glove-work of Junior Murray rates poorly next to his replacement Courtney Browne”. This is downright chauvinism, provincialism and parochialism at its worst. Two close competitors, and one is by comparison “poor”. This warped reasoning and the other the opposite of “poor”, could only be, the result of the proposition that any player from Barbados is by virtue of birth there, superior to any other, especially a ‘small islander,’ and any contender with a Bajan is of necessity a “poor” comparison.
Clearly, the author of this Editorial comment wrote the piece late Friday night and early Saturday morning. At that hour of writing, in his Mount Gay stupor, his prejudices poured forth without abatement, in a stream of unconsciousness, with pre-judgements unlimited, and based on nothing.
Now I have restrained myself all along. Nothing has undermined Caribbean Unity, not economics, not politics, not geo-politics more than this prejudice, like all prejudices, unfounded but trotted out on every occasion to keep others open to the prejudice thinking and acting in the old insular, divisive way. And the gross expression of such prejudices goes unchallenged, and is therefore imbibed by the unsuspecting. I have seen nothing in the succeeding issues of this Barbados paper, which even objected, let alone challenged this perfervid nonsense from beginning to end.
To think that a Barbadian leading newspaper could be the source of such prejudice from beginning to end, denouncing people as crazy, because they believe that one player should be picked and not another, a normal cricket sentiment; denouncing as lawlessness boatloads of Grenadians going to St Vincent to watch a game and there to protest as “lawlessness” makes a mockery of both common sense and Reason, and shows the editor to be devoid of both.
After all, it was Barbados which staged the worst protest in the history of West Indies cricket, and probably all cricket.
This very paper which carried this Editorial Comment, in article after article, urged people to boycott the first ever Test match between West Indies and South Africa, after apartheid had been defeated, with the cricket field being one of the places on which a pitched battle against apartheid was decisively won.
Few people, even in Barbados, can remember the name of the cricketer over whom the Barbadians staged this crucial boycott. Truth to tell, Anderson Cummins is now a forgotten man not just of West Indies cricket, but of Barbados cricket. He passed into cricket oblivion both without notice and without a whimper. Yet Barbadians made a bang, a big bang about him, when West Indies selectors, in no dilemma whatsoever, and in their wisdom left him out. Barbados rose up in protest. An almost total boycott of a Test Match because, in their view, a Barbadian player was left out.
It did not matter that South Africa was playing their first Test Match since repudiating apartheid in the West Indies, and the West Indies would need crowd support. It did not matter that the West Indies had a new captain, Richie Richardson, in his first Test Match as captain. All that mattered was that Barbados had only one player on the side, Desmond Haynes, and Barbados wanted more, even the undeserving Anderson Cummins to play – regardless of his bowling, batting or shall we say “glove-work.”
Maybe we should just pause awhile, to remind that the player that Barbados staged this Test boycott about did not even have an average performance in Test Cricket. Anderson Cummins played 5 Test matches. As a bowler, medium-fast, which was his main claim, he bowled in the 5 Test matches 618 overs for 342 runs, took 8 wickets at 42.75 a piece. He took a wicket every 77 overs! As a batsman in Test cricket he batted 6 times, was once not out, had a highest score of 50 and amassed in all his Test innings, a meagre 98 runs for an average of 10.33. It was for him that Barbados boycotted a Test Match. If ever there was cricket madness, this was it! But there is need for sympathy, and if not sympathy, understanding.
Structural adjustment had just come upon Barbados. It shocked Barbados out of their wits. They were always regarded as a frugal and orderly people. Probably the best organised society in all of the Commonwealth Caribbean. This disorder in their national finances, which occasioned structural adjustment hit Barbados’ self-image and self-respect between wind and water. They were angry. They hit out and hit back at cricket. Nothing else could explain it. For Barbados to be downsized in cricket with only one Barbadian on the W.I. team, at the same time they were structurally adjusted economically, this hurt Barbados in a way that they have never been hurt before or since. They found solace in the collective effort of a boycott, however national. Even Tony Cozier, the acknowledged doyen of West Indian cricket writers, took cover behind past indiscretions or the old-fashioned ways of the West Indies Cricket Board, and gave tacit support to the boycott. The best lacked all conviction, while the worst were full of passionate intensity, not least insularity and chauvinism.
The rest of us in the West Indies were simply stunned. We did not know what to say about this Barbados boycott. We hoped it wouldn’t happen. When it did, we had to suspend believing our ears. No one anywhere, however, accused Barbados of “madness” or “lawlessness”, even though the behaviour could not rationally be explained on cricket grounds. West Indies cricket, has not yet recovered from that awful blow. It undermined Richardson’s leadership from the start.
I wonder now at this editorial writer of Barbados who had the temerity to pen such a comment. It is clearly without thought. It is a knee-jerk reaction: Small islander by boatloads protesting against a Bajan wicket-keeper, it must be madness, sheer lawlessness, they pass their place now. I have deliberately expressed it thus. It is redolent with all the scorn and contempt with which English Colonial masters looked down on us lesser mortals. We sadly, have now incorporated that worst aspect of colonialism into our own behaviour. It has to be uprooted and lopped off, root and branch. It is not just cricket commentary. It is a way of seeing. Such an insular chauvinist way of seeing is the biggest obstacle in our way now.
It is generally acknowledged that C.L.R. James’ Beyond a Boundary has a superb and exceptional place in both Caribbean and world literature.
There is a passage in it which applies to the writer of this Barbados editorial comment.
“There are those people who, having enjoyed the profits and privileges of [insularity or] racialism for most of a lifetime now that [insularity or] racialism is under attack, profess a lofty scorn for it and are terribly pained when you so much refer to it in any shape or form. Their means have changed not their ends, which are the same as they always were, to exploit [insularity or] racialism for their own comfort and convenience. They are a dying race and they will not be missed. They are a source of discomfort to their children and an embarrassment to their grandchildren.”
Those evils, insularity, racialism, and the worst of all, racism, I see them as part of a piece. I am not so sure as C.L.R. James was, that their exponents are dying. Maybe in their death throes, they have returned to attack affirmative action, banana protection, small island protesters, denouncing all such as madness and lawlessness. Such as they when white, defend the First World against the Third World, and when black bow to the First World and sign any and every agreement put before them, without a thought.
As C.L.R. James so rightly argued, the moment you support a player from your own island; the moment you raise the race question; these characters pretend a lofty scorn for insularity, racialism and racism and are terribly pained at any reference. It could not be better put than James put it: “Their means have changed but not their ends, which are the same as they always were to exploit insularity, racialism and racism for their own comfort and convenience.”
Antigua and Barbuda are full of them, whites and blacks. Among the blacks as I have hinted before, they have incorporated all the old colonial prejudices into themselves. It is their view, that we Antiguans and Barbudans, do not have the expertise to make an informed decision on an important matter, or for that matter, a less than important matter. It is more than self-contempt. It is a way of reserving profits and privileges for themselves and a few aliens. It is the neo-colonial mentality and social type in command, hence their thought patterns thrive.
Among whites here, it takes the form that they are against racism or racialism. The moment a black man raises the question of racism, they pretend a lofty scorn of he or she who raised the subject. The reason is their means have changed, but not their ends. They wish to continue to gain all the profits and privileges which racism provided them, and are alarmed whenever anyone raises the subject, lest the majority become conscious and work to end those profits and privileges which they have enjoyed and continue to enjoy as a result of an inequitous and iniquitous system.
Our writer in Barbados would deny that he would want to see all those “Small-islanders” off the West Indies team except the Andy Roberts, the Vivi Richards, the Richie Richardsons and the Curtly Ambroses. Only the exceptional, the world class should get in. All else would be reserved for them and their undistinguished “glove-work” on the excuse that they alone are capable of “tremendous concentration.” Racist whites believed that such a characteristic was inherent in the white skin. Blacks following them, now declare that these characteristics are a function of size. They are part of the same piece. They are not to be tolerated under some wishy-washy pretence that there can be tolerance of chauvinists, fascists, racists, racialists and parochialists. If they are a dying to breed their deaths should be hastened. For high and low, they are a stumbling block to the emancipation of humanity from thraldom at work and at play, cricket obviously inclusive.
I wish to end on a more upbeat note. C.L.R. James in Beyond a Boundary tells marvellously a marvellous story about one Telemaque, a Trinidad cricketer, a plebeian, who had his annus mirabilis, but was still cruelly left out of the Trinidad team. James has a character recount the immediate aftermath of Telemaque’s omission this way:
“They left him out. And his wife – she weighs 200 pounds – is sitting on a chair out on the pavement, crying because her husband isn’t going to Barbados with the Trinidad team, and all the neighbours are standing round consoling her and half of them are crying too.”
It is an imperishable tale of human solidarity on the grand scale. I see in the “boatloads of Grenadians” who went to St Vincent “to watch the one day game” the same height of human solidarity as displayed in the instance of Telemaque. The boatloads of Grenadians who went to St Vincent, unlike in the distortions of the Barbados Comment writer, that they “did not go to watch the game,” they went precisely to do that. They are cricketer lovers and they love justice, above all they are prepared to stand an act in solidarity, so that men and women, as the victims of injustice, do not stand alone. There is no greater human virtue.
It is only with that spirit and those virtues, the unity, the indivisible unity, of belief and action, that we can rise above insularity and go beyond the nation state, which fostered both racialism and racism, not to speak of chauvinism. Rise instead, to the Regional State, which will give humanity a new lease on life beyond the current alienation, for which as Jacques Lacan proved there is no therapy. Chauvinists and racists au revoir.
Last updated on 30 May 2022