John Young cricket
Cricket and cricketers love tradition. We’ve seen it all around the West Indies in the grandstands named for the greats. Tradition gives the game another dimension but it’s also been used as a cloak for prejudice.
The guest of honour at the second Test in Port of Spain was Andy Ganteuame who scored a century in the only Test he played. In 1948 the West Indies had a “tradition” that captains had to be white, and space had to be found for John Goddard.
Years later Goddard asked Ganteuame who had opened the batting in his place. “You, John!”
“I have to admit,” Ganteuame says, “it gave me an idea how callous these people were. To hell with who doesn’t play … he couldn’t even remember he had opened!”
One of the finest West Indies players of the 1930s was Learie Constantine. He campaigned to have Frank Worrell installed as captain in 1960 because he believed the team needed a captain who respected his players.
Sometimes race can be a source of humour. Constantine wrote of his first tour: “In the first games in England most of us youngsters found that we could not tell one white from another. It was bewildering and annoying, especially when, as it seemed to us, people like Jack Hobbs and Andy Sandham, having been dismissed and sent back to the pavilion, immediately came walking out to bat again! It was many years after that I learnt that some English players shared the same thoughts and anguish about us.”
Prejudice shapes stereotypes. South Africans recognise the fixed opinions about West Indians and cricket. Cricket was played in the West Indies from the middle of the 19th century but this was ignored. As Gary Sobers wrote, “some even believe we started after World War II”. Another misconception is that blacks can only be bowlers.
The most prevalent stereotype has West Indians full of dash but with no staying power. When Wisden wrote that Constantine, “in the mood suggesting his work on Saturday afternoon league cricket, brought a welcome air of gaiety to the Test arena” the great writer CLR James was incensed. On the contrary, Constantine’s “unorthodoxy was carried out with a precision and care fully equal to the orthodoxy of McDonald’s classical action and perfect length”. James made the broader point: “Contrary to all belief, popular and learned, Constantine the magician is the product of tradition and training.”
The great West Indies team of the Eighties certainly had flair, but their success was based on technique, fitness and mental strength. There was a team who set a precedent.
Shannon CC was the club of the black lower middle class in Port of Spain in the early years of the 20th century. “They played,” according to James, “as if they knew that their club represented the great mass of black people on the island.” They were fiercely focused: “No Australian team could teach them anything in ruthless concentration.” Constantine’s dream was to see a West Indies team “that would play with the spirit and the fire, the spontaneous self-discipline and cohesion, of Shannon.”
Clive Lloyd, captain of the team that finally took the Shannon philosophy into Test cricket, wrote this: “One thing is certain it is no longer possible for writers to patronise us as the brilliant but erratic calypso cricketers.”
Tim Hector, an Antiguan politician and edi-tor, argues that it is precisely in cricket that West Indians have shown discipline, unlike in economics or politics, [where] “we remain pastoral societies with happy-go-lucky pastoral attitudes. Oddly, in cricket alone we have overcome as evidenced by Haynes, Richardson, Roberts and Larry Gomes, men who assiduously applied knowledge to their production of high quality performances.” (Trinidad and Tobago Review, December 2000.)
James wrote that “the clash of race, caste and class did not retard but stimulated West Indian cricket”. Black men like Constantine and Worrell coopted and transformed the game of the white elite.
The stands named after them in Trinidad and Barbados are in good condition. The Kensington Oval’s eastern gate in Barbados is in a bad state, however. It’s named after John Goddard.