The inextricable link between cricket and the decolonisation of the West Indies

Cricket plays such a significant role in the lives of West Indians today, but its history can be traced back to the white plantation owners who imported the game from England in the 18th century. As a so-called ‘gentlemen’s game’, the white colonists ensured that only they themselves had the right to bat and bowl, whilst their slaves’ role would be to merely retrieve the ball from the dense sugarcane fields as and when needed. As time went on, the physical strength that years of hard, enforced labour had given the enslaved people meant their sheer power made them rather good at fast bowling. And so, they were eventually brought into the game itself. But let’s not be fooled by this inclusion. It was tiring to bowl in the heat of the Caribbean sun, and as batsmen were the ones heralded in the game at that time, the enslaved bowlers were simply used as fodder to provide their masters with batting practice. Unfortunately, things didn’t change for a long time. Despite the abolition of slavery, even in early Test matches between England and the West Indies at the beginning of the 20th century, both sides were still predominantly white. As the subject of decolonisation of Caribbean countries heated up in the 1960s and 1970s, cricket took on a whole other dimension for the West Indian people. The team had changed from a white-dominated 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 region itself. The game played a crucial role for the Windrushgeneration who had crossed the Atlantic to help rebuild a postwar Britain. Many of these emigrants were struggling with racism and xenophobia in the so-called “motherland”. The success of their home team could mean the difference between entering their often-hostile workplaces with their heads held high or alternatively being subject to a torrent of racial abuse if their team lost.

In the mid-1970s, Clive Lloyd, captain of the West Indies team from 1974 to 1985, was extremely unhappy with the West Indian cricketers being dubbed “calypso cricketers”, which implied that the team had a lack of seriousness and professionalism. Rightly finding the expression condescending and unappreciative of the talent and determination of the West Indians, Lloyd conveyed to his team that they were representing the Black Caribbean people, who had been repressed for centuries through slavery and colonisation. The team was transformed, and they became an irresistible force that few could withstand, let alone beat. 1976 was a pivotal moment for the West Indian team. On the cusp of the Test match between England and the West Indies, England cricketer (but crucially hailing from apartheid South Africa) Tony Greig declared his intention to make the West Indians ‘grovel’. The term ‘grovel’ had unhappy connotations of repression and punishment for the players, given their forefathers’ enslaved pasts. The determination to win against the English had never been greater. Earlier in 1976, Antigua had held an unsuccessful referendum on independence from the United Kingdom, and with several Antiguan players, including Viv Richards and Andy Roberts, on the team, emotions were running high. There is no doubt that throughout this time, the theme of decolonisation was inextricably connected with the success of the West Indian side. The players entered the Test match as soldiers going to war. They beat England in that hot summer of 1976 and went on to beat them another six times in a row.

West Indies cricket, at its best, has always been a representation of the hopes and aspirations of the people of the Caribbean and has demonstrated time and time again how small Caribbean nations can work together and achieve great things.

This was just the beginning of the golden age of West Indian cricket. Reigning supreme on the world stage throughout this whole period of decolonisation and anti-apartheid struggles in southern African countries, after 1979, the team did not lose a series for 15 years straight and won the first two One Day International Cricket World Cups to boot. These ‘calypso cricketers’ had well and truly become the ‘Caribbean Colossus’.