Noted Trinidadian Marxist critic C.L.R. James must have turned in his grave when at a meeting of Caribbean ministers on the state of cricket in the Caribbean, one minister said that the time had come for society to move on, to turn its back on the game, because it had served its purpose. The context of the statement was one of popular social distress caused by yet another defeat at the hands of the Australians. The English had also inflicted a painful defeat upon the West Indian team now considered among the three weakest teams playing the international game. The social traumas caused by persistent defeat were to be found everywhere. In the workplace, references to falling productivity were commonly made; in the domestic space, family relations were made miserable by the general social anxiety that followed the humiliating defeat. In the Caribbean, for sure, cricket is no sporting matter.
It’s an entirely new ball game in these islands. James would have examined the meaning of the loss of competitiveness and probed the significance of the minister’s statement, while bearing in mind that the public continued to feel deep emotional attachment to the team as a symbol of the Caribbean nation imagined. Caribbean social scientists are in general agreement on one point at least: the dominance achieved by the region’s cricket team in the two decades of world leadership, from the mid-1970s to 1995, represents one of the finest expressions of efficient human resource mobilization since the fulfillment of the national independence agenda.
There was no finer, more eloquent scribe of the rise of West Indian cricket culture to global dominance in the age of nation building than C.L.R. James. His monumental 1963 text, Beyond a Boundary, linked cricket culture and national society in a way that captured the public imagination. The ability of West Indian cricketers to achieve and sustain global dominance for such a protracted period was seminal in the historical development of international contests. James explained this achievement in terms of the liberating democratic ethos of the game within the Caribbean context. For him, the mandate given the game in the Caribbean was to facilitate the forging of a unique, cutting-edge, indigenous style and method. Nationalist sentiment and historical sensibility combined to propel the creative abilities of two generations of young West Indians to give their best, giving the game and its supporters much more than they ever received in return.
Prior to the 1970s, West Indian cricketers were stereotyped—particularly by English commentators—as efflorescent entertainers that lacked both effective management skills and a focused mentality to sustain winning ways. Race-based attitudes and opinions that had developed about West Indians, blacks in particular, within the context of colonialism and Empire, found their way onto the fertile ground of the cricket field. West Indian success in the age of nationalism, James stated, subverted to some extent these negative worldviews, and far from being comical losers, West Indians emerged within international circles as hardened professionals who had brought new, scientific methods to the game that assured their supremacy.
For those being beaten by this newfound supremacy, West Indians had become racketeers and messianic mercenaries releasing an unrelenting mechanistic meanness that knew no bounds. They were now accused as destroyers of a gentleman’s game through the plain and stony application of a merciless professionalism. During the period of their dominance, they were described as “world-beaters” rather than “world leaders.” Clive Lloyd, captain of the team that established a new record for consecutive victories, was criticized by detractors for unleashing four of the world’s fastest bowlers who became known as the West Indian “assassins.” The West Indians, though, had merely copied a strategy used against them by the Australians in 1975 when they were humiliated in a 5–1 series defeat.
In the 1940s, James had predicted the coming professional maturity of the West Indian team in much the same way that he had foreseen the collapse of the British Caribbean Empire. He rallied his visions around the leadership of Frank Worrell who constituted the nexus of cricketer-statesman within the burgeoning nationalist project. Worrell, it was said, would spawn a new generation of players whose mission would be to consolidate the anti-imperialist ideology within the quest for national independence and promote the game as a tool within the discourse.
West Indian cricket success assumed divine dimensions at home. It became a way of life, much like the Empire within British popular culture. But overseas, West Indian players were hated as much as they were feared. There seemed to be no end to what was described as a totalitarian grip on the game. In the Caribbean, two generations had grown up with the assumption of their “right” to rule in the sport, an inheritance hard-earned but increasingly taken for granted. In 1995 came the turning point. Australia’s victory over the West Indies team set in motion a series of defeats by England, Kenya, Pakistan and South Africa that have accumulated into the region’s greatest cultural nightmare.
The West Indian public went in search of explanations. It was a moment unparalleled in the cultural and ideological development of this ambitious but fragmented nation. The team symbolized, in a unique way, the enormous potential of an archipelago that drew cultural sustenance from the world’s oldest civilizations in order to fashion the contents and context of a new world. What West Indians feared from their defeats were the symbolic meanings: long-term intellectual decline, cultural degeneration and the collapse of nationhood. Nations fall not so much from the might of opposing forces, but as a result of internal intellectual decay and loss of spiritual will.
If James had witnessed the disastrous defeats, he might have said that they are signs of new Caribbean times and reflective of the kind of popular culture that has taken ideological roots within social relations and public institutions. He might also have said that this grassroots, postmodern Caribbean culture is crass rather than creative, and is a reaction to the hegemonic conservative and uninspired political leadership that suppresses the progressive causes upon which Caribbean societies had been built and historically advanced. As examples, he might have invoked the cannibalism of the Grenada Revolution, the financial rule of the International Monetary Fund and the associated emergence of an anti-conceptual, technocratic mentality that now dominates political discourse about nation building.
The overall effect is that James’ paradigm linking cricket to national society is fractured and retreating, gradually being replaced by something less understood and arguably less desired. The contours of paradigm shifts in West Indies cricket culture have always been clear. First, the 19th century discourse represented cricket as an instrument of white elite exclusivism within colonial society, which persisted into the early 20th century. But a shift in values began during the inter-war period and reached maturity by the 1950s. Cricket then became a beacon of the popular democratic movement, and symbolized in a triumphalist sort of way the rise of the disenfranchised community to institutional and political empowerment—the nationalist paradigm. Frank Worrell’s selection as captain in 1959 cemented that discourse. James’ active advocacy of Worrell presented the process of change with an ideological scaffold that held together the public integrity of the nationalist paradigm. In the literary hand of James, and with Worrell’s socio-political postures, cricket in the West Indies came to represent a new force that drew sustenance from the anti-colonial, democratic, labor movement.
The linkages are clearly articulated by James, whose writings gained biblical status in the independence decade. Cricket became hinged to nation building, giving expression to an anti-colonial sentiment that could not be contained. The cricket hero became a demi-god, a role model, invested with expectations that suggest iconographic “worship” and idealization.
Worrell was the epitome of it all; graceful, sincere, smart, mature, visionary, morally correct and successful—all the things that a young nation-state should be. He was the symbol of nationalist pride, anti-colonial achievement and socio-psychological liberation. He represented West Indians as a statesman and ambassador. The cricket hero was thus ideologically constructed within a political project, and his public conduct was expected to be supportive of those objectives.
What has happened in the post-Jamesian decades is that the nationalist and regionalist projects have collapsed under the weight of what is described as a cocktail of political opportunism and economic incompetence. The Caribbean nation-state, after 30 years, cannot legitimize its own existence. It is insecure or pessimistic. The regional integration project, buried under the rubble of post-federation acrimony, has resurfaced as a construction of technocrats tinkering with economic instruments and institutions of governance. To proclaim one’s West Indian identity today is to invite indiscreet humorous responses. Furthermore, it is now commonplace for West Indians to assert that outside of cricket they are not “West Indian,” meaning that their investment in the regional project goes no further.
Within this context, it is not difficult to demonstrate that the popular democratic movement has shuffled to a halt and is considered defeated in some quarters. A conservative corporate elite now dictates political leadership, supported by economic gurus who see the abandonment of political sovereignty and national pride as a necessary prerequisite—or unavoidable condition—of global integration. The abandonment of labor by the labor parties that gave birth to the nation-state and the subjugation of the nation-state by big business, have combined to create a devastating moral and spiritual void.
Retreating nation-states can no longer speak with conviction to issues of national identity, patriotic pride and social freedom because they have been reduced to a degree of public prostration to North Atlantic financial agencies that allow them sovereignty only with respect to law and order. There is no political movement that roots its concepts in the idealism of the historic struggle for structural social equality with material justice. In fact, these ideals have been politically defeated by the ideological success of the neoliberal right. As a consequence, the region’s “labor parties” have become anti-labor, and workers everywhere are running for shelter and leadership within the walls of a revivalist evangelical Christianity that now commands the communities’ largest social gatherings.
The death of social idealism and the triumph of “born-again religious escapism” signal the abandonment of youth to regressive social discourses and highlight the defeat of the nationalist, regionalist projects. Within this context of failure, cricket is asked to carry alone the cross of a crucified political agenda whose leaders have lost popular emotional appeal. What we have before us now, then, is a political project in crisis and a cricket culture in transition; the synergy has disintegrated, and cricket is calling for a separation, if not a divorce.
The unhinging of the cricket culture from the ideals of the discredited political project is the central cause of conflict within the game. Objectively, the moral imperatives of the nationalist paradigm have been questioned and are being rejected. The new post-nationalist paradigm has its own distinctive moral features, ideological trajectory and social culture. An important feature is that cricket heroes have rejected the popular perception of themselves as role models, ambassadors and representatives of social idealism. They see this as limiting and socially bankrupt.
Today’s cricket hero, therefore, now wishes to be identified as a professional craftsman with only a secondary responsibility to the wider socio-political agenda carried out by his predecessors. He does not wish to carry the burden of responsibility for nationalist pride, regional integration and the viability of the nation-state. He sees himself as an apolitical, transnational, global professional aiming to maximize financial earnings within an attractive market, and is principally motivated and guided by these considerations.
The logical implication of this self-perception is that the cricket hero wishes to distance his performance and psychological state from the considerations of the 1950s and 1960s, from the political project of nation building. These post-nationalist players want to function as “pure” entrepreneurs within the market economy of sport, and with a minimum emotional or ideological bond to the psychological needs of nation-states. Their commitment is to the cash nexus that recognizes none of the sentiment of the political agendas of the nationalist paradigm. Sport, they suggest, is an economic activity that transcends political boundaries and ideological sensibilities.
The encounter with South African apartheid in the 1980s signaled the beginning of the detachment of players from the concept of national representation. In their quest to accumulate cash under conditions of apartheid, dozens of West Indian players turned their backs on the foreign policy positions of their states and stipulations of cricket officials. In some cases, they publicly rejected the views of political leaders whom they accused of duplicity with respect to their own involvement in clandestine trade links with South Africa, and for supporting openly informal white supremacy systems and values at home.
The working-class black male continues to see social life in the West Indies as offering distinct privileges and advantages to white and other ethnic minorities, and are thus unable to effectively differentiate between their own domestic marginalization and the oppression of blacks in South Africa. For them, West Indian societies have their own insidious forms of social apartheid against which the political leadership offers little tangible protection. From the ghettos of Georgetown to those of Jamaica, working-class youths believe they have no concrete reason to identify with the manifestos of political parties and the policies of governments. It is from these communities that today’s cricketers are largely drawn.
These ideas are reflective of the general trends toward the global commodification of cricket. As a major sport, cricket remains among the last to be packaged for intensive media sale and satellite television consumption. Global telecommunications have now taken command, and West Indian stars—attractive to viewers as individuals, if not satisfying as a team—are prime candidates for this attention. World cricket is now a media spectacle, and West Indians, perhaps more than other players, seem most indifferent to the gaze of their national publics and political leaders.
Only in the West Indies do we find cricket culture so totally dependent upon the sponsorship of foreign corporations that have shown no sentimental attachment to the agendas of these nation-states. Players and administrators see their dependence on the mercy of companies like Cable and Wireless, whose extraordinary profiteering in the region as the sole supplier of telecommunication services is scandalous. The 1996 West Indian team’s journey to the Indian subcontinent for the cricket World Cup was sponsored by the VB Group of Companies, an Indian multinational whose brand name beer Kingfisher decorated the garments of West Indian players. The entire world watched as over the course of a year, West Indian players promoted the products of British then Indian multinationals. In 1998, the South Africans came to the team’s rescue and secured a sponsor that enabled the tour to take place after a successful player strike for more pay. The players, happy for the income, did not feel any contradictory sentiment with this global identification largely because it is in line with their own thinking and self-perception. It would be unreasonable to expect any other reaction from them given their universal belief that their own nation-states have been unable, or unwilling, to offer them satisfactory remuneration.
The West Indies is more vulnerable to shifts in the market economy of cricket. Because of the material limitations of their nations, players must think “global” in order to survive with honor. They are on the market to be bought and sold wherever cricket is played. Those who speak of the re-colonization of the region by transnational companies and financial institutions can readily see in cricket sufficient evidence of a well-adjusted, welcoming mentality.
The predicament, of course, is that the wider West Indian public is not ready to accept a detachment of cricket from the national agenda, largely because people have invested too much of themselves in the transformation from the colonial to the nationalist paradigm. They are not emotionally prepared for this unhinging of cricket from psychic well being, and continue to locate the game at the center of the discourse about social and political identity.
The Caribbean world has changed radically since the passing of James in 1989. Post-colonial generations have very different mentalities from those who went before. It should also be recognized that the nationalist passions of an earlier time have been significantly weakened and cannot be rekindled by patriotic speeches so long as the actions of the state on a daily basis question its own relevance. The cricket star, like everyone else, should have an intelligent understanding of the crisis of small nation-states and working-class marginalization within the global economy. Clearly, West Indians have to decide on the viability of mini nation-states after some 30 years of their existence. This is a major issue, but it cannot be assumed that while the public ponders it, representative cricketers will behave as if there is no problem. Cricket will continue to be a mirror within which to view social paradoxes and expressions of popular expectations.
About the Author
Hilary McD. Beckles is the principal at the Cave Hill Campus, University of the West Indies, Barbados. He is also the author of The Development of West Indies: The Age of Nationalism.
