Shots heard around the world: The wonder that was the West Indies

This month, the meek capitulation of the once-mighty West Indies — they entered India almost unnoticed for a one-sided two-Test series nestled between a deeply political Asia Cup in Dubai and a fiercely marketed one-day series against Australia — prompted me to pick up the volume. For, if you are a cricket follower of my vintage, the West Indies story remains the crescendo in the symphony that is world cricket.

The goosebumps came as early as the dedication page:

“To Learie Constantine who opened the door of international cricket.

To George Headley who entered the building with such style.

To Frank Worrell who showed it could be occupied with distinction.

To Clive Lloyd who very nearly took permanent possession.

And, of course, to Garfield Sobers who dazzled all who dwelt therein with the range of his talents.”

The names are important: Constantine was Trinidadian, Headley and Worrell were Jamaicans, Lloyd is Guyanese, and Sir Garry was from Barbados. Together they are a symbol of unity and a common Caribbean identity that could likely never have been established without cricket.

Juggle these players with those whose exploits are celebrated in the pages that follow (Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott; Rohan Kanhai; Vivian Richards; Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Andy Roberts; Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes; Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh) and the pulse quickens.

It takes the mind back to a heady mix of race, revolution, art, music and colour — green, for the land itself; yellow, for the gold that was stripped; red, for the blood that was shed — that gave West Indies cricket its power and its glory. It brings back flashes of a time from the 1970s when students were marching on the streets, Bob Marley & The Wailers were composing tunes, and Viv Richards was walking in to bat, chewing gum.

It evokes memories of how a group of people, charged by this rare confluence of events, coalesced to enthral the world.

For, with a nod to CLR James, what do they know of West Indies cricket who only cricket know?

CHIMES OF FREEDOM

The Caribbean islands figure as tiny dots on the world map. From Jamaica in the west to Trinidad in the east to the northern coast of South America in Guyana, 15 nations that were once under British rule come together to form the West Indies cricket team. The name comes from Christopher Columbus’s great fallacy — he sailed west across the Atlantic in his quest to “discover” the Indies, which lay to his east across the Indian Ocean.

Cricket in the region gradually grew under the influence of British officers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, transformed into inter-colonial contests between the islands by the 1860s, led to the creation of an all-West Indies team in the 1890s, and eventually to Test status in 1928.

Respect, especially from cricket’s White overlords, was harder to earn. It should have come through the batting of George Headley in the 1929-30 home series against England (three centuries and a double) and an unbeaten 270 in Kingston in 1935 that gave West Indies its first innings win over its colonial masters.

But Headley was quickly dubbed the “Black Bradman” by British and Australian columnists. He was venerated, put on a pedestal as an anomaly, and used as the yardstick to measure all great West Indian batters of the future, including the “Three Ws” (Worrell, Weekes and Walcott) in the ’40s and ‘50s.

It took the arrival of the master-of-all-trades Sobers to change the paradigm.

There have been many great all-rounders through the ages but never has there been a cricketer as complete as Sobers. He batted at an average of over 57, grabbed 235 wickets in 93 Tests, transformed the art of close-in fielding, and carried himself with the air of a global statesman. It was a time when the Caribbean islands were gaining independence from British rule, and for a region in need of an ambassador, Sobers emerged as world cricket’s most influential figure of the 1960s. So much so that anyone who would come close to matching his all-round abilities later — Jacques Kallis is a notable contender — was likely to be called the “White Sobers”.

CRICKET, LOVELY CRICKET

And so, after the hunt for respectability in the 1930s and the quest for self-determination in the 1960s, West Indies was ready to dominate by the 1970s and ’80s. It came through the leadership of Lloyd, the brilliance of Richards, and the most fearsome and technically perfect pace battery (Andy Roberts, Colin Croft, Holding, Marshall and Garner) ever assembled before or since.

What West Indies cricket achieved in that era is unmatched, even by the Aussie Invincibles led by Bradman in the 1930s and captained by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting in the 2000s.

It wasn’t what they did but how they did it, breaking barriers in every country they visited.

Which is why watching the West Indies cricket teams of the present flounder repeatedly is a dagger through the heart. It’s as if the sport has lost its soul in the Caribbean, with no great mission or movement to fuel the passion anymore. Left behind in a haze of new-age computer analyses that offer mico-improvements on every front. Trailing in a new wave of professionalism its cricket establishment has been unable to embrace. Managing to barely stay afloat in the shorter formats and gasping in the ultimate test.

The once-mighty West Indies need to dig deeper and find something extra, if not from the present then from their glorious past. Michael Manley’s treatise may offer some reminders, like this one from calypsonian Lord Beginner about the first West Indies victory on English soil, in 1950:

“Cricket, lovely cricket

At Lord’s where I saw it

Yardley tried his best

But West Indies won the Test

With those little pals of mine

Ramadhin and Valentine.”

(The views expressed are personal.)