This is an archive copy of a document originally located at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/stories/s829456.htm
with Warwick Hadfield
11/4/2003
"I Don't Like Cricket, I Love It!"
Summary:
For more than a century the fight for
equality has been as much apart of cricket in the Caribbean as the battle to
beat an opponent with bat and ball. It was only 40 years ago Sir Frank Worrell
became the first black man to captain the West Indies. As the modern Australians
and West Indians pull stumps on the first day of the Firest Test in Guyana we
look at cricket's role as the instrument for change in the Caribbean through the
eyes of Professor Brian Stoddart, the Australian chosen to deliver this year's
Sir Frank Worrell Lecture.
Details or Transcript:
Warwick Hadfield: Welcome again to another
Sports Factor, and one that’s going to take you to a faraway, sunny place: the
West Indies.
MUSIC
Warwick Hadfield: And there, Australia’s cricketers are playing in the
First Test in Guyana, as part of the four Test Series for the Sir Frank
Worrell Trophy.
And at stumps on the first day, the score is, The West Indies all out for 237
and Australia 1 for 120.
MUSIC
Warwick Hadfield: And Stephen Waugh’s men are not the only Australians
touring the West Indies. On May 1st, Professor Brian Stoddart from the
University of New England will present the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial
Lecture at the Centre for Cricket Research at the University of The West Indies
in Barbados.
Now Brian follows in the footsteps of some of the more celebrated thinkers on
the summer game. Michael Manley, the former Socialist Prime Minister of Jamaica,
who became a cricket writer; John Major, the former Prime Minister of Great
Britain, who wasn’t a Socialist but is now a cricket administrator; and
Richie Benaud, the former Australian cricket captain who might be a
Socialist, so long as it comes in beige.
Sir Frank Worrell, whose grave forms a sacred part of the university
campus in Barbados, was the first black cricketer to captain the West Indies in
Test matches. And the last of these were played in the Australian summer of
1960/61 in the unforgettable tied Test series against Benaud’s team.
Announcer: As you’ve probably heard, the first cricket Test in Brisbane between
Australia and the West Indies ended in a tie on the last ball of today’s play.
Excitement was at its peak when West Indies fast bowler, Wesley Hall, bowled the
last over of the day.
Commentator: Australia, 9 for 232 as Lindsay Kline comes out, the last man for
Australia, two balls to go in this Test match, Hall is back at his bowling mark.
He will bowl to Kline. And here’s the single that wins the match for Australia
YELLING. It’s a tie, 232, oh and the excitement here, the crowd have jumped the
fences, swarming over onto the middle of the pitch.
Warwick Hadfield: In 1967 Worrell died of leukaemia; he was aged just 42.
Almost 40 years on his name still rings right throughout the Caribbean, not just
cricket but the whole of the region’s culture.
Brian Stoddart explains why.
Brian Stoddart: Well I think it was because of one of those great
intersections, Warwick, between a game actually having a much wider resonance to
most of the community in that part of the world than simply a playing activity.
Because you’ve got to remember that cricket in that part of the world had really
been socially segmented and stratified so that there were black clubs, there
were brown clubs, there were elite white clubs and so on. And someone like
Worrell came along, first of all he was the first black captain of the West
Indies team, it had always been a white captain before that. And secondly, he
was the sort of person who demonstrated that not only did he understand how
important it was to succeed on the field, but he had a very, very strong
influence on people’s attitudes and behaviours as cricketers off the field as
well, and that had a lot to do with coinciding with the independence of several
of the Caribbean nations. So I think it was partly to do with the timing of when
he was playing, partly to do with the attraction of the style of play that that
Caribbean team exhibited, but also the stage of social and economic development
that many of the Caribbean states were going through. And it’s worth remembering
now that cricket and the university are the only two things that are in fact
West Indian. Otherwise everything politically, economically, socially, is
individual island states and nation states.
Warwick Hadfield: Why is it so that they felt so strongly about having
this West Indian identity through someone like Sir Frank Worrell, and
also through the Marxist philosopher C.L.R. James, yet they didn’t develop as a
one nation in the West Indies.
Brian Stoddart: That’s right at the centre of a lot of the debate now
about where West Indies cricket and community goes. There are probably two or
three things, many of which worked in parallel. The first was that cricket was
one of the few things that actually brought attention to the West Indian states
outside of the region; that was the one thing that really put them on the books,
and of course much later on that was demonstrated in things like the effect of
the West Indian Cricket Board’s stand on apartheid in South Africa. It really
meant that they were punching above their weight in the normal political and
economic sense. The second is that of course the Caribbean states themselves, we
tend to think of them from the outside as somewhat homogenous, if you like, but
they’re not. They all have very, very different characteristics, as you know.
Jamaica’s very different from Trinidad and Tobago and they’re both very
different from Barbados, and all of them are very different from Guyana. And
that’s to do with social make-up, political history, economic development, and
in that sense the attempt to create a West Indian Federation in the late ‘50s,
early ‘60s, which was precisely the time when Worrell was leading the cricket
team, that Federation was very ill-fated because it was simply not possible to
get a concordance of ideas and attitudes amongst those nation states on things.
So in that sense cricket was the only thing that survived which in many regards
made it the most important thing for a lot of people in the Caribbean, not only
those who subscribed to the cricket ethos.
Warwick Hadfield: How conscious was Worrell of what was happening, that
this push for independence and for this Federation, you know, when he was
playing cricket in the middle of a cricket ground, would that be something that
would be in the back of his mind, that he was representing something greater
than 11 people playing a funny game with bat and ball?
Brian Stoddart: Oh Warwick, I suspect not. I think if he was out there
playing, he would be like most other cricketers in the middle, you really do
concentrate on what’s going on. But because of the campaign that was run by
C.L.R. James, who you mentioned, it was very clear to Worrell and a lot of the
people around him, that they meant a lot more than simply succeeding at cricket.
Now James had returned to Trinidad by that stage after a very long time in the
United States, and then in Britain, and he ran this captaincy campaign on behalf
of Worrell, very public debate with a lot of pressure on the various governments
and on the Cricket Board to have Worrell appointed as the black captain, at a
time the lead-up to independence. Now the intersection of those two things was
obvious and Worrell very clearly understood all that. There was a huge amount of
public debate about it, it was every day in the newspapers and it ran for four
or five years, so it was a very powerful issue at the time. So that as soon as
Worrell ascended to the captaincy, he knew that he was, in a sense, on trial,
not only as a cricket captain and tactician and strategist, but also as a
representative of what might possibly happen in the Caribbean community. James
himself believed quite firmly that if they got that sort of unification and
black leadership in the cricket team, then there was going to be a natural
lead-on to a lot more co-ordination and collaboration amongst the states
themselves on the political front, and of course that didn’t happen. And in a
way that put even more pressure on the cricket role, especially through the
early, mid, late ‘60s.
APPLAUSE
Frank Worrell: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This is indeed a very sad, and
happy occasion, because the drawing of the stumps this afternoon marked the end
of the most sensational, interesting and enjoyable series that any West Indies
team has ever been engaged in. It also marks the culmination of a very enjoyable
stay in your country, and we’d like to thank all those people who have very
kindly letters. And those of you who lavished hospitality. But we’re also sad to
think that we shan’t be taking this back with us. And judging from the standard
of the batting today, well I think I’m left with the duty of explaining to our
people at home what this trophy looks like, what it feels like. I shall be able
to tell them where it is, and where it’s likely to stay until we meet you again.
APPLAUSE
Warwick Hadfield: Sir Frank, or Frankie, Worrell speaking at the end of
the final Test in 1961.
And as well as presenting Richie Benaud, the Australian captain, with the Frank
Worrell Trophy, the West Indian captain also gave him his cap, his tie and his
blazer.
Frank Worrell: And finally, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a symbol here of a
scalp; secondly, you can have my neck; and you can have the upper half of my
body.
APPLAUSE
Frank Worrell: I shall refrain from offering the lower half of my body because
the knees wouldn’t stand him in good stead. Thank you all.
APPLAUSE
Richie Benaud: Sir Donald Bradman, Frank, ladies and gentlemen, Frank was
kind enough to say that he was offering me a scalp and his neck and the upper
half of his body, but I’m quite certain that you’ll all agree with me that he
himself will remain in the hearts of cricket lovers in this country for many a
long day
APPLAUSE
Warwick Hadfield: The idea of picking your best ten players from the West
Indies and then to pick a white man to lead them, how did someone like Sir
Frank Worrell, with obviously his great intellect and grasp of all the
issues, how did he cope with that early in his career when he toured countries
like England and also Australia?
Brian Stoddart: It had worried people like Worrell, but it worried a lot
of other players as well who were pretty prominent at the time, because here
they were, obviously selected on merit amongst the world’s best players, and
occasionally would be led by someone who was perhaps not up to that standard in
the playing sense, and arguably wasn’t really that distinguished as a captain.
There’s no question that Worrell’s ‘60/’61 tour and the tied Tests and all the
rest of it, had an enormous impact on people’s sensibilities about what
Caribbean cricket actually represented. I think the warmth had been there
before, remember the first West Indies tour of Australia was back in ’31, just
before Bodyline, some very good players then. It captured the imagination but
not in the way in which it did 20 or 30 years later. And I think it actually had
a lot to do with the sort of style and the approach to the game that Worrell
instilled in that team in ‘60/’61, and that’s persisted ever since even though
there’s been some fairly fiery confrontations between the two teams on the
field, there’s always been that sort of public empathy I suppose. And let’s face
it, it’s one of the few areas I think that Australia would actually interact
with the Caribbean at all.
Warwick Hadfield: Now one other thing, Brian, C.L.R. James said that the
arrival of nylon began the emancipation of the slaves, many of whom were in the
Caribbean, because that ended the cotton trade. We talked about Sir Frank
Worrell being the first black captain, that was only 40 years ago. For some
people there was in fact on those first tours that the West Indians made, there
were the descendents, direct descendents of slaves; has the slavery thing worked
its way right out of the process now?
Brian Stoddart: Well I don’t think so, because abolition was in 1834 and
when the first Constantine went to England in the early 20th century, his
grandfather had been on the slave plantations, and that’s a very powerful
memory. And of course the whole history of the Caribbean is really marked by the
slave experience. It did segment people socially, it positioned them
economically, it told them what they could and could not do, and cricket was a
really integral part of that. And that became powerfully manifest I think in the
‘60s in particular. When independence came along there was a lot of very fierce
pride in the fact that for the first time you had a cricket team that was
totally black. Now that’s only about 35 years ago, and certainly on the way
through there’s been things like the alleged influence in some cases of the
Rastafarian impact, which many cricketers actually tried to eliminate because
they didn’t think it was in line with the cultural tradition of Caribbean
cricket. So in a way, what slavery did was really structure society so tightly
that the consequent generations post direct slavery, have always been impacted
by it in some indirect way. Now I think you’re right: over time that will
gradually grow out, but I think the good parallel is say what’s happened in
African-American society, where there’s in many ways even more interest in
slavery because people are starting to find new and different ways in which they
actually believe that experience a couple of hundred years ago, has had an
impact on social formation and development now. And cricket’s no different from
that. Certainly when I was playing in the Caribbean in the ‘80s, people still
talked about it and where they descended from and what they got to, and they
could play cricket, but their forebears couldn’t and those sort of things. It
wasn’t an everyday discussion but it was certainly there, and of course because
cricket was a successful area of social achievement performance for a lot of the
black communities, that was reinforcing the whole point about ‘Well we’ve come
out of slavery, and now we’re able to do these kinds of things.’
Warwick Hadfield: Sir Frank Worrell died in 1967 of leukaemia, so
he didn’t get to see the West Indian cricket giants that they became in the ‘80s
and ‘90s. Was his legacy to create that, or was that something that arose from
other factors out of the West Indies?
Brian Stoddart: No, I think that Worrell was very instrumental in that
rise, remembering that they won their first Test series against England back in
’50 and then ’51. They were building on that, they had some great players,
they’d started to rebuild by the time that Worrell got in there, and then
through the ‘60s they really did have a strong production line of very, very
fine cricketers. Sobers started in ’54 but really started to peak through the
late ‘50s into the ‘60s when Worrell was around. And of course a number of other
players had known him, even after he’d left the game and was working at the
University of the West Indies. So his impact I think there was, he gave a lot of
people the belief that they really could be the best in the world, and he also
gave them I think, almost that sense of confidence that carried on to the field
and carried over into their play. So that by the time they came out of that very
flat patch in the mid-‘70s and moved into the period under Clive Lloyd
and later Viv Richards, I think there was a very direct line between Worrell and
what happened later.
MUSIC
Clive Lloyd: The players have got to have respect for him and respect for
his authority as captain. He’s got to instil discipline, see that they are
physically fit and they’re genuinely interested in what they’re doing. And
they’re interested in playing the game as a team, because cricket is a team
game. And he has got to lead by example. You don’t have to be the best
performer, you’ve got to have the know-how of running a side, you’ve got to be
able to do something, you don’t necessarily have to be the best batsman or the
best bowler, but you’ve got to I think hold your own in the company. You can’t
be a passenger, no, I don’t think so, I don’t think it would be the right thing
because you would feel yourself if you’re not good enough to be in the side.
MUSIC
Warwick Hadfield: And speaking there, Clive Lloyd, the most
successful West Indian captain.
Lloyd was a great uniter of men in the same way as Worrell, and probably to the
same extent Sir Vivian Richards, although there’s some argument about that. But
since then, since those two fellows have retired, West Indian cricket’s really
struggled, and I guess with Australia there now, a lot of people are going to be
saying ‘Can they ever get back to be as strong as they were in the ‘80s and the
‘90s?’
Brian Stoddart: Yes, that’s a big question, and the one thing I think
people from outside the Caribbean always had difficulty in understanding is just
the ferocity of the debate that surrounds that. When I first went there in 1985,
at the time when they were incredibly strong, there was a series running in one
of the local newspapers talking about a crisis in Caribbean cricket, they didn’t
think they were as strong as they should be. That debate’s never gone away.
The sort of arguments that are going on now range from things like alternative
sports, you know, there’s one line that says there’ll never be another Curtly
Ambrose because anybody over 6-foot-6 will play basketball. There’s others that
are saying well it’s really because of the social fabric in the Caribbean and
the fact that people don’t have much to aim at any more. And there’s a lot of
other ways that you can get on in life rather than cricket. Some of those
debates I think are slightly superficial. I think there are some structural
things that Caribbean cricket is looking at, like formal coaching and cricket
academies. But again, I think a lot of it goes back to that leadership issue
that you mentioned. I’m always a bit reluctant to say any team will never get
back up there, because that sounds a bit too much like Francis Fukiyama and the
end of history to me. I think there are always social transformations that are
going on that all games and all communities go through. There was a period in
the late ‘60s, early ‘70s for example, where there were some serious doubts
about the ability of Australian cricket to come through. So I think the
Caribbean cricket culture will certainly produce very good players and very good
teams again, but that will depend upon dealing with some fairly complex issues I
suspect.
Warwick Hadfield: C.L.R. James, Sir Frank Worrell, Lloyd, all
those people gave cricket a dominant place in the Caribbean culture, the
Caribbean socio-economic state; is there a danger though that one day cricket
could fade, its importance could fade and as we’ve talked about those other
sports like basketball, the American influence could push cricket right into the
background.
Brian Stoddart: Well it’s certainly been happening over the last 20
years. For example, a lot of potentially good cricketers end up either in
college athletics or college basketball or some other sport mainly in the United
States, but of course a lot of them as cricketers also go to England and
elsewhere, and that international exchange of players has actually been quite
interesting. It started a long time ago. I grew up in New Zealand when we had
Sammy Gilham and Bruce Paradieau playing for us in the ‘50s. So that’s been
there. But I think it’s become accentuated over the past few years.
A real danger I think that a lot of people feel is that if Caribbean cricket
doesn’t start to become a lot more successful relatively soon, then the pressure
from those other activities will come out. Some other people I think though feel
that it’s being replaced in some other ways. Caribbean literature for example,
Derek Walcott, George Lamming, all of those sorts of people, have a big impact
on the world stage in literature. In other areas, people like Arto Bolden and
some of the athletics people have done extremely well and a number of Caribbean
people started to invest their emotional capital into some of those sort of
pursuits. Personally I don’t think that cricket will disappear, but I think it
may well begin to take on a more settled role in Caribbean community life.
There’s a lot of talk about national regeneration in places like Barbados where
cricket is perhaps not quite so much central to that regeneration as it would
have been 20 years ago, and that may well be simply a part of the political
maturation process that’s going on all over the Caribbean. But I don’t think we
should assume that the game will totally disappear because I think its cultural
heritage in the Caribbean is just so powerfully strong that it plays a major
part in the whole historical evolution of the culture there. The very fact that
they have things like a centre for cricket research and treat the historical
analysis of cricket’s history and sociology so seriously, indicates just how
interwoven it is with the general fabric of political and economic life there.
Warwick Hadfield: And one last question: your tip for the four-Test
series between the modern West Indian side and the all-conquering world champion
Australians.
Brian Stoddart: Well practicality says Australia, but sentiment says West
Indies. I suspect that in Barbados and in Guyana, given what’s happened in the
last week or so, I suspect that Australia will be very competitive in Guyana. I
think on the couple of the other tracks, West Indies might actually be slightly
better if their fast attack can come up to snuff on the day, which they’ve had a
habit of not doing in the last little while. So I suspect it’ll be a very
competitive series. I probably think Australia’s going to get ahead but I
wouldn’t be surprised if there’s the odd West Indian win.
MUSIC
Warwick Hadfield: Brian Stoddart, cricket historian and author.
C.L.R. James’ influence and his reputation have both continued to grow, even
after his death. His foray into cricket writing, ‘Beyond a Boundary’, is still
regarded as one of the best books ever produced about a game famous for its
literature. His range of subjects though was far greater than just sport.
When asked by an English television network to present a series of lectures, he
chose the following subject: Pan Africanism, Shakespeare, Solidarity and the
Policy Revolt, American Politics, the West Indies and then, finally, Cricket.
James spent the last years of his life living in Brixton, in London. And that’s
where, while a student at Oxford, the Australian author, Richard Flanagan,
made a pilgrimage to meet him.
Richard Flanagan: Yes, I was a great admirer of C.L.R. James, and I was
fascinated by this figure who combined an extraordinary passion for sport with a
great belief in the centrality of politics in our world, and who’d been so
important in the development of the thinking of black liberation movements
around the world. And I got to meet him I think in about 1986, not long before
his death and he was living on I think it’s called Railway Road or something, in
Brixton where the riots were taking place with almost frightening regularity,
just once every couple of weeks at the time. And it was these two most humble of
rooms above an abandoned shop on a street corner and he had a bed in one side
and he had bookcases constructed in the manner of the poorest of students with
bricks and boards, and he was this enormously proud, dignified individual
sitting there. He had a rug over his legs, he was fairly frail by this time, and
we talked a little about sport, he told me the story about how Leary Constantine
had said to him when he’d talked about how the West Indians in the end somehow
lacked that capacity to dominate Test cricket in the way the whites could at the
time, because this was the dominant racial myth, that the Caribbeans were
colourful and carnivalesque but they lacked that killer instinct; that was one
of the great racist myths. And Leary Constantine said ‘We are no less than
they’. And it struck me most forcibly, because I was an Australian who was
constantly reminded of their colonial inferiority, I was a student at Oxford and
you know, had to endure the dullest and most frequent of taunts about the
inferiority of Australia, and the paucity of our culture, and it struck a real
chord with me, this expression, ‘We are no less than they’.
He told me about his falling out with Trotsky, with whom he was great friends
for a while, and how Trotsky didn’t believe that race had a role to play, just
had a very simple feeling that once the working class had emancipated itself,
then all other wrongs would be put right be it the position of women or the
position of other races. C.L.R. James didn’t believe that, he believed these
issues were worthy of being addressed independently. They were significant and
important in their own right.
Warwick Hadfield: Trotsky wasn’t all that keen on sport either, he
thought those pastimes took people’s minds away from the other pursuits, the
political pursuits.
Richard Flanagan: Yes I don’t think Trotsky had ever played beach
cricket, I think this may have been one of the problems with the 20th century
revolutionary movement. Perhaps if he’d hit a six over the fence he might have
had a more generous sense of the possibilities of the human spirit.
Warwick Hadfield: Author, Richard Flanagan, and that’s The Sports
Factor for this week.
Next week we’re asking you to be upstanding for the sporting anthems. These days
you can’t have the sporting moment without the song.
MUSIC
Woman: Well an anthem has to be associated with some degree of national pride or
at least allegiance to something, something emotional, something uplifting,
something rousing, so I suppose it’s got to have something that touches the
sentiments associated with the event or the sport or the feeling associated with
I guess allegiance in some ways.
MUSIC
Man: If we go right back in Australia’s musical history to the very beginning,
the earliest recorded example of sort of functional music in Australia, in fact
the earliest European music-making that’s recorded, is in fact the Rogue’s
March, which was played on a fife and a drum, I think because an officer was
caught in compromising circumstances in the women’s tents when the First Fleet
or the Second Fleet arrived, it’s back in the 1780s.
Warwick Hadfield: I don’t know what sport that is, but I’m sure we’ll
find out next week on The Sports Factor.
Thanks this week to two of the finest from Down Under: producer Maria Tickle,
and technical producer Melissa May. I’m Warwick Hadfield.
Guests on this program:
Brian Stoddart |
Frank Worrell West Indian cricketer and humanitarian |
Richie Benaud Former Australian Test cricket captain |
Clive Lloyd Former West Indian cricket captain |
Richard Flanagan Author |
Robyn Holmes Musical Curator at the National Library |
Geoff Brownrigg Screensound Australia |
Presenter:
Warwick Hadfield
Producer:
Maria Tickle
© 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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This is an archive copy of a document originally located at
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/sportsf/stories/s829456.htm
All copyright remains with the creator.
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