I couldn’t let June pass by without contributing to #ReadCaribbean, which is a reading event which celebrates Caribbean literature throughout the month of June. So I sat yesterday and wrote this long post π
In the place I am from, the Caribbean is synonymous with the game of cricket. So here we admire Caribbean cricketers. This admiration happened during my dad’s days too, and during my grandfather’s days too, to the distant past. One of the reasons for this was that Caribbean cricketers played the game in a cool, stylish, and carefree way, and it was a pleasure to watch. So when I was growing up, I hadn’t read much of Caribbean literature, no one I knew around had. But we read lots of stuff about Caribbean cricketers. Articles which came in the newspaper, in sports magazines. We used to go to friends’ homes where my friends’ elder brothers or parents had old sports magazines which were sometimes a decade or two old and we used to read all of them. Then I found old cricket anthologies in my school library and old cricket books in the public library and I devoured them all. My classmates in school mocked me for reading old books about unknown cricketers but I had fallen in love with cricket and Caribbean cricket by that time that I didn’t care what anyone said. That is how I discovered Caribbean cricketers and fell in love with them β with Learie Constantine, George Headley, Frank Worrell, Alf Valentine and Sonny Ramadhin, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wes Hall, Conrad Hunte, Alvin Kallicharan, Colin Croft and many others.
So my reading of Caribbean books is mostly on cricket. I haven’t read much of Caribbean literature as such and I need to do better on that front. The few Caribbean literary works I’ve read, I discovered most of them through one of my friends’ recommendations. Some of these books I’d highly recommend are, Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘A Small Place’ (it is about Kincaid’s native island of Antigua. It is also the native island of one of my all-time favourite cricketers, Viv Richards), ‘The Pain Tree’ by Olive Senior (this is a collection of short stories. Olive Senior is a Caribbean literary legend), ‘Blue’ by Emmelie ProphΓ¨te (powerful book about Haiti), ‘Musical Youth’ by Joanne C. HillHouse (beautiful YA novel about music and romance).
But this post is about cricket, and so the literary fiction part ends here π I’m sorry πΒ Nearly everyone who is participating in #ReadCaribbean is writing about literary fiction and someone has to write about cricket and I thought ‘Why not me?’ π
Frank Worrell
So the simple straightforward question first. Which is the first cricket book about the Caribbean that I read? I think it was probably Frank Worrell’s biography. Frank Worrell was the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team (that is what the Caribbean cricket team was called). There was a lot of politics before that. The way it worked was that typically after all the players were selected, most of whom were black, while some of them were of Indian origin, a white player would be brought in and would be appointed as the captain. The logic behind this was that only a white guy had leadership skills and could lead the team and a black guy might be a great player, but he didn’t have the leadership skills and wasn’t good enough to lead the team. It is 100% bullshit and racist, of course, but that is the way the Caribbean cricket selectors thought those days. Typically the white player who was brought in to captain the team, was not good enough to be selected in the team, otherwise. So this continued for many years, and at some point people started protesting, and then one day in the early ’60s, Frank Worrell was appointed as the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team. The first series he led the team was against Australia, and it led to one of the greatest cricket matches ever played, the Brisbane tied test. This book talks about all that. But it also talks about Frank Worrell’s childhood and how he got into cricket and his evolution as a cricketer. Frank Worrell was elegant and handsome and well read and he was a great cricketer and a great captain and a great ambassador of the game. I read this book as a teenager, and I fell in love with Frank Worrell. Now years later, I can’t remember the name of the author of the book. I wish I had written it down somewhere.
C.L.R.James
So, the important question next. Which is my most favourite book on Caribbean cricket? There can be only one answer to this question. Any cricket fan will have the same answer. And that is this β ‘Beyond a Boundary‘ by C.L.R.James. I wrote a long post about it a few years back. I just read it again, and I feel that I can’t improve on it, and so I’ll just share it here. Here is how it goes.
‘Beyond a Boundary’ is a book which is a memoir, a social history and a sporting history, all rolled into one. This style of writing was unusual when the book first came out and so it was unique and the book broke new ground. In the book, James talks about his own life and how he started playing cricket, and then covers West Indian cricket history from the beginning of the 20th century till around the 1960s. He also looks at West Indian society and culture through a cricketing lens. The book asks the question, “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” That question has acquired a legendary status since James’ first posed it, and has the same kind of significance that Camus’ question in the first passage of ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ has. Many have pondered on what that question meant, and what could be its potential answers. Whether the book answers that question or not, you have to read it to find out.
‘Beyond a Boundary’ had a mythical status in my life, because I had heard many older cricket fans talking about it in revered tones, and I had dreamt of reading it since I was young, but the book was out-of-print and was hard to find. Then, one day I discovered that there was an edition in print by Duke University Press. It was ironic, because cricket is not an American sport, but this book, which was one of the greatest cricket books ever written, was out-of-print in cricket playing countries, but an American university press kept the flame burning, by keeping the book alive, keeping it in print. I paid a king’s ransom to get that edition. When a few years later, the book came back widely in print, I got two more copies π The book on the left in the picture below is the Duke University Press edition, while the one on the right is the newer one.
After I got the book, I read it in one breath and it gave me goosebumps throughout. There is a reason it is revered by older cricket fans. It is a beautiful love letter to West Indian cricket, and cricket in general, the best there is. James’ prose is beautiful and gorgeous, and it feels like he is an intellectual from the 19th century, because he doesn’t shy away from difficult words β one chapter is called ‘George Headley : Nascitur Non Fit’, another is called ‘Alma Mater : Lars and Penates’. We take it in our stride, of course, and we continue reading, and we feel that we are in the presence of a master. James thoughts on the great Learie Constantine, on how the first black captain of the West Indies cricket team was appointed, and on the great Frank Worrell, are a pleasure to read. James also shares his love for books and reading and places them in a cricketing and cultural context. It is not often that we find discussions on William Hazlitt and William Makepeace Thackeray in a book on sport.
‘Beyond a Boundary’ is one of the greatest books on sport, society and culture ever written. It is a love letter to the West Indies and to the game of cricket. It deserves to be more widely read.
A new biography of C.L.R.James came out a few years back. I hope to read that sometime.
I want to write about a couple of more things. One is about two books. The second is about a person. The books first.
Fire In Babylon
The first book is called ‘Fire in Babylon’. It is written by Simon Lister. Simon Lister is English, but this book is about Caribbean cricket. There is a Caribbean cricket team, which is regarded as one of the greatest cricket teams of all-time. The members of the team started playing from around 1975, and many of them played together till around 1990. Between 1980 and 1990, they didn’t lose a single series against any team. The successors to these great players carried forward this legacy and the team continued its unbeaten run till 1995. Many of the legendary players from the Caribbean played during this time. This book is about that team. It is a must read for any cricket fan or for anyone who wants to understand Caribbean sporting history and culture. This was also made into a documentary which is a must watch.
Michael Holding
The second book is called ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ by Michael Holding. I wrote a long review about it sometime back. It is too long to be reproduced here and so I’ll share it in the stories. I’ll share some excerpts here. I apologize, because even the excerpts are long π
Michael Holding β Mikey to fans and admirers β is one of the greatest cricketers who ever played the game. He was a much admired and feared fastbowler during his playing days. A few years after he retired he got a call from someone asking him whether he would like to commentate on the game on TV. Mikey said ‘Yes’ and before long he became a well-respected and admired and popular commentator.
I couldn’t follow Mikey’s cricket career, because I was too young at that time, but I followed him when he commentated during matches. The thing I loved about Mikey was that he was fearless. He didn’t care what people thought, or if it would offend them β if he had opinion during the game he commentated on, he shared it. Sometimes, I didn’t agree with him, especially when he criticized his home team, the West Indies (for me, it doesn’t matter whether they win or lose, I’ll always love the West Indies cricket team. I’ve loved them since I was a kid, and I’ll love them till the end of my days. Before me, my dad loved them since he was a kid. It is a family tradition in my house ο), but I always admired Mikey for being fearless.
So, sometime in 2020, Mikey was commentating during a test match in England, and play was cancelled that day due to rain. Such rainy days are good times for commentators in the studio to have a cricket conversation. Someone asked Mikey what he thought about the Black Lives Matter movement. It opened a dam and Mikey opened his heart out. Viewers who were disappointed that the day’s play was rained off, were engrossed listening to Mikey, and soon the messages started pouring in. The next day Mikey was interviewed on a live TV news channel and he spoke more about it. People started telling Mikey that he shouldn’t stop with this, but Mikey felt that he had said everything he wanted to say. At some point his friend who helped him write his memoirs a few years back, told him that with the voice and platform he had, he can write a book about this and that will reach more people. So Mikey decided to write this book.
In this book, Mikey interviews leading black and indigenous athletes of contemporary times, all of whom are legends in their fields, and asks them to share their experiences when they were discriminated against because of their race. Some of the famous athletes interviewed are Usain Bolt, Thierry Henry, Naomi Osaka, Michael Johnson, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Hope Powell, Adam Goodes, Makhaya Ntini. Mikey also shares his own experiences when he was the target of racism.
But Mikey doesn’t stop with this. If he had done that, this book would have been a collection of interviews. He also talks about the history of Black people across the centuries till the present day and covers the recent violent incidents by the police against innocent Black people. It is essentially Black History 101. If you have read books about it before, you would know most of it. But, like me, if you have read about it in a scattered fashion, you’ll find many new things in it.
After talking about the bad experiences of sporting legends and giving us a history lesson, Mikey also shows the way forward. He talks about how education is important, how teaching history which is unbiased and factual and which doesn’t sweep the past below the carpet, is important, and how this will help in changing people’s minds and help in making our shared future better and more equal for everyone.
‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ is a beautiful book, a powerful book, a heartbreaking book, an inspiring book. Mikey is famous for being fearless and for speaking his mind, and he does that in every page of this book. He sometimes turns his critical, unflinching gaze on himself, and describes how he sometimes failed to protest against racism and fight back, during his playing days. It is stirring to watch. The book is filled with anger, of course, the anger of the right kind, because of the inhuman things that happened, but it is not an angry book. Mikey’s tone is neutral and pitch-perfect, and he doesn’t make sweeping judgements and generalizations but sticks to the facts. I still don’t know how he managed to do that, because in a book like this, it is easy to get into an Us Vs Them mode, but Mikey doesn’t do that. His analysis is based on facts and it is nuanced. It is perfect.
‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ won the William Hill prize in the UK in 2021. The William Hill prize is given every year to the best book on sport in the UK, and it is the sports book equivalent of the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer Prize. Typically a book on cricket or football wins this prize, because these are the two biggest team sports in the UK and both have a rich literature. But ‘Why We Kneel, How We Rise’ is no ordinary book on sport. It is much more than that. It looks at racism through the lens of sport, but then goes much beyond that. It is a book about our contemporary world and it is an important, powerful book. This book is a bestseller in cricket-playing countries, because of Mikey’s background in cricket, but it is not just a cricket book. It deserves to be widely read by readers across the world. It is destined to become a classic.
I can’t think of any sportsperson, present or past, who would have written this book. Sportspersons might make individual gestures on particular occasions or even share their experiences, but writing a full-length book like this, they’d avoid. Because it is filled with inconvenient truths and would offend a lot of people. Maybe Serena Williams might write a book like this after twenty years. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. But Mikey was brave and fearless and stuck his neck out and wrote this book. I don’t know whether there were any repercussions. I’m sure he lost some friends because they were offended. But sometime after the book was published, Mikey suddenly announced that he was retiring as a cricket commentator. It came out of the blue and was totally unexpected. It was heartbreaking for fans like me. Somehow one felt that there was some connection between his book coming out and him retiring. They happened too close to each other to have been a coincidence. It was almost as if Mikey thought that this book was his parting gift to his fans and admirers. The truth might just be that Mikey wanted to spend more time playing with his grandkids, tending to his garden, and taking walks with his wife to the beach. I hope that is the truth. I want to believe in that.
Learie Constantine
Now the person. His name is Learie Constantine. He was one of the greatest Caribbean cricketers of all time. C.L.R.James has written about him in ‘Beyond a Boundary’. There are many biographies about him, including a recent one by Harry Pearson. It looks very good. There is one thing about Learie Constantine that I want to write about. It has nothing to do with cricket. After he had retired from cricket, Constantine was working for the British government. In 1943, he had booked a hotel room for himself and his family in London. Constantine had specifically told the hotel guys that he was black, and the hotel told him that there wouldn’t be any problems because of that. But when he arrived at the hotel with his family, the hotel refused to accommodate him. It turned out that the reason for this was that American soldiers were staying at the hotel and they had complained to the hotel management when they saw Constantine there. At that time, there was segregation in America, but not in Britain (atleast legally). That is, it wasn’t enough for the lovely American soldiers that they were practising racist segregation in their own country, but they also wanted to spread that infection across the world, wherever they went. Constantine went and sued the hotel, there was a big hue and cry against the hotel management in the British parliament, and Constantine won. That is Constantine 1 β Racist American soldiers and hotel management 0. It was one of the great achievements in the fight for racial equality.
Constantine’s battle predated Rosa Parks’ battle by more than a decade, but it is less well-known now, because this happened in England, and Constantine was from the Caribbean. This victory by Constantine needs to be celebrated more. There seems to be a popular perception that there are black people only in America. There are black people in the Caribbean too. They also fought against racism. And they won. Constantine was one of them. He needs to be celebrated and his story needs to be remembered.
So that’s it. This post is too long already and so I’ll stop here. Caribbean cricket is beautiful and it is also filled with beautiful literature (if you read C.L.R.James, you’ll agree with me that it is pure poetry and literary nonfiction) which I hope will be celebrated widely not just among cricket fans, but among general readers.
Do you like cricket? Do you like cricket books? Do you like Caribbean cricketers?
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