Could Offensive Slogan Reignite West Indies Cricket?

The social order in the ‘British’ Caribbean was carved out of slavery in the period 1650-1838. Its main industry was sugar; its ownership was British, and workforce African. British law, custom, culture and social conventions dominated the islands’ development.

Cricket, argued the historian Brian Stoddart, provided the greatest cultural monument to English social influence. It assisted the process of elevating whites above the black populations and enabled the propertied elite to celebrate the bonds that tied them to England.

Hilary Beckles further notes that the politics of West Indian cricket and the history of West Indian politics in the century after Emancipation travel the same road. This, according to cricketer Learie Constantine, was “to keep the black man in his place”.

The West Indies first sent a team to England in 1900, and from then until 1957, the captain was always white. That some players were not good enough for international cricket was secondary to their social status.

In 1930, for example, the captaincy was offered to Jack Grant, a white, 23-year-old Trinidadian, who had only recently completed his studies at Cambridge. Younger than all save three of his fellow tourists to Australia, Grant had never captained a first-class team and had not even played in a first-class match in the region of his birth.

He was succeeded by his younger brother Rolph for the 1939 tour of England, and his deputy was the 19-year-old Jeffrey Stollmeyer. The likes of Constantine and George Headley were overlooked in favour of a captain with four caps and a vice-captain with none.

Rolph Grant’s selection came against a period of acute political and economic unrest in the Caribbean. Barbados had legalised political parties and widened the franchise, while in Jamaica the Peoples National Party was formed in 1938 on the proviso of seeking independence.

Strikes by sugar workers in Jamaica, coal loaders in St Lucia and in Trinidad’s oilfields helped merge class and national consciousness, and challenge the established order.

As traditional society faced the uncertainty of ideological struggle, the stress on ‘playing the game’ and ‘keeping a straight bat’ was reinforced as part of a wider value system that desperately sought to maintain order and authority.

Amid this social turmoil the ruling authorities asserted their position by calling on British warships for support and by naming the son of a wealthy and powerful Trinidadian family to lead the region’s cricket team.

When Denis Atkinson led the West Indies to defeat in the first Test against Australian 1955, Stollmeyer noted “that it was well nigh impossible for him to command the respect of the players and get their full support”.

Atkinson was replaced by John Goddard, who had been in virtual retirement since 1952, and the Cambridge-educated Gerry Alexander became captain for the 1957/58 home series against Pakistan. Being of "mixed race" his appointment marked a departure from exclusively selecting whites, but he came from the right social background and to Frank Birbalsingh he was considered “white by class and colour”.

C.L.R. James’ crusade for Frank Worrell’s promotion to the captaincy became embraced in the broader campaign for black leadership in the Caribbean.

During the period 1960 to 1966 four British West Indian territories achieved independence, and the cricket team became the leading force in the sport. The emergence of Worrell as captain in 1960 inevitably led to the working-class Gary Sobers and then the black nationalist Viv Richards, as the processes of democratisation finally broke the shackles of the colonial mindset.

So when the Otago Cricket Board use the slogan “It’s all white here” to promote the forthcoming Test match between New Zealand and West Indies, it is not surprising that their prospective guests feel a sense of outrage.

Apparently, the slogan was meant to be a reference to the white clothing worn in the longer form of the game.

To the West Indies Players’ Association, however, the slogan “may be reasonably perceived to be loaded with racial innuendos”. Furthermore, “it comes at a time when the spectre of racial intolerance is insidiously and, at times, openly appearing in major sporting events.” 

Beckles has long argued that one of the reasons the edge has been taken from West Indies cricket is their lack of understanding of the political processes that forged West Indies cricket.

This crass marketing exercise provides the opportunity to remind this one great side of their historical and political roots.