Tag: cricket

I know that a large percentage of those who read this column faithfully are not really interested in the game of cricket. I have however written about this subject from time to time because of my passion for the game and the knowledge that there are people out there who will appreciate a dip into the stream of the game from time to time. It is also my experience that whenever I write about cricket, at least a handful of people are sufficiently intrigued by what I have written to develop some interest in the game.

The last time that cricket was featured in this column, I made reference to a book, perhaps the quintessential cricket book by C.L.R. James, that polyvalent intellectual from Trinidad. In writing about the book, I expressed the wish to re-read it, fifty years after my first acquaintance with it. My wish was however tempered by the knowledge that the possibility of laying hands on a copy of the book here in Nigeria was anything but remote. In the new global village however, I did not have to worry too much about laying my hands on the book as I am now the proud owner of not one but two copies of that justly famous book. This is because two of my readers in North America, quite independently of each other, furnished me with a copy of the book. I am writing this by way of expressing my gratitude to Akin Adesokan, Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and award winning writer. My other benefactor over in Canada is Dr. James Akingbasote, a toxicologist and my former student at Ife. I thank them for giving me the exquisite privilege of going through that book once again.

I have read more than a few books about sports in my time and I can say that no game lends itself to being written about more than the game of cricket. Many retired cricketers, journalists and commentators have written about so many different aspects of the game that a rather large library consisting of books on cricket can be put together quite easily. The library at Igbobi College had a decent collection of such books and my introduction to the game was made possible by the inordinately long periods of time I spent reading those books as well as the number of hours I spent playing the game in those early days now swallowed by the passage of time but still kept fresh by the tenacity of memory.

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It needs to be repeated that the book, Beyond a boundary, is an excellent book, as fresh today as it was when it was published a shade over fifty years ago. It can be read as an autobiography as it is as much about cricket as it is about the author who not only played the game but immersed himself in virtually all aspects of it. He was as devoted to the game as to the politics of the game. Beyond the politics of the game, he was perhaps even more involved in politics as for most of his adult life he was a clearly identifiable Marxist who wrote extensively about the colour of his politics. In addition, he was a recognisable anti-colonialist who showed a great deal of interest in the process leading to the independence of the West Indian islands from Britain. He was an ardent Pan-Africanist who recognised the importance of unity between Africans at home and those in the Diaspora. He was very much interested in the promotion of a federation of the West Indian islands but had to be content with the federation of West Indies cricket within which he was very active at least at a critical juncture.

Cricket is more than a game. It is part of a culture spread by the British within all their settler colonies in Australia, New Zealand, the Indian sub-continent, South Africa and the USA where the graft did not quite hold. The West Indian islands were however slave colonies with their own distinct characteristics and the blacks were allowed some limited participation even during slavery as they were allowed to run after the balls which were hit into all parts of the field by their white owners. This activity was in fact described by Charles Dickens in Pickwick papers. In time, this activity became an addiction to all the races on the islands and after emancipation in 1834, Cricket clubs were formed all over the islands, not just on the basis of race but also on the shades of colour as was practically everything else. To put it bluntly, there were the top clubs for Europeans and the least posh clubs for people whose skins were about as dark as mine. In spite of this, the West Indies began to field representative sides against England and Australia as from the early twenties. And so, when they were fully admitted into international cricket in 1928, there were more blacks than whites in the team and the stars were undoubtedly George Headly, a brilliant batsman from Jamaica and an all rounder, the powerful Learie Constance from Trinidad.

Those early years as a test playing nation were no more than encouraging for the West Indies as their players gained knowledge and experience playing against teams which had been playing the game at more exalted levels. They started to make other nations take notice in the fifties. In 1951, they beat England 3 – 1 with their first victory at Lord’s, the high temple of cricket leading to the composition of the famous calypso, Cricket, lovely cricket.

By 1951, C.L.R. James had become deeply involved in the liberation politics of those days, at the height of the post-war decolonisation struggle. In the West Indies, this struggle was for political independence as well as independence within the cricket boundary. By the fifties, the islands had produced many gifted black cricketers who could stroll into any team in world cricket. In spite of their undoubted prowess, the politics of the time precluded the appointment of any of them as the captain of a West Indian Cricket team made up of both black and white cricketers. This situation was initially irritating to the majority of black West Indians. By the time that decade was coming to a close, the situation had become intolerable as political independence was on the verge of being achieved. C.L.R. James was in the vanguard of those pushing for both the appointment of a black captain for the West Indies cricket team as well as freedom from British colonial rule.

Unlike in many other games, the appointment of a captain is crucial to the performance of a cricket team because he directs every aspect of team performance on and off the field of play. No genuine lover of cricket can be sentimental on this point and you could not find a more genuine cricketer than Mr. James anywhere. The  case was made by the availability of not one but three potential black candidates for that coveted position.

These days, we often hear of golden generations of footballers from a particular country, all born over a short period of time. This phenomenon was perhaps first observed in the small island of Barbados when three boys were born within fourteen months of each in terms of time and a mile radius in terms of geography. Named Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott and Frank Worrel, they were collectively known to the world as the three Ws. Frank Worrel, a member of this glittering trio was, to the satisfaction of many, including Mr. James  named the first black captain of the West Indies. Playing together over many years, they helped put West Indies on the global cricket map with their superlative batting performances. It is not also far-fetched to say that they laid such a firm foundation for Barbadian cricket that by the sixties this small island was home to the most powerful cricket club side in the world. The rest as the saying goes is history and what a glorious history it was for West Indian cricket for the twenty years following their victory over England in 1976.

Over the last couple of months, I have caught myself going through the motions of bowling a cricket ball and reliving those sunny days of my life when cricket was at the centre of whatever life I had at the time. I have frequently wondered if I would not have opted for the life, in my imagination, the glamourous life of a professional cricketer. Being a professional cricketer would not have been a bar to my becoming the pharmacist or anything else. After all one of the most prominent cricketers of the day was Alan Sheppard who not only played cricket for England as a clergyman but had the added distinction of being enthroned the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool. Long before Sheppard, there was the case of the first Cricket super star of his days, the legendary W.C. Grace who combined a glittering Cricket career with the duties of a physician. Cricket is cricket and virtually anything else can be added into it. Playing phantom cricket in my head convinced me to turn my attention to that beautiful game, no apologies to Pele and football, which is what has sat me down this morning to write an article about cricket. I am not assuming that the majority of my readers know anything about cricket. Indeed I would be safe in assuming that most of them do not know the first thing about the game. Those who know, or more appropriately used to know about cricket have, over the years forgotten about what the game is all about. What I know however is that quite a few people will have their imagination fired to the extent that they want to know more about the game. This has happened before.

In 2003, long before the football World cup finals was hosted by South Africa, the World cup of cricket was played in South Africa. Although the whole of South Africa was agog over this tournament, the only other countries which took any bit of notice of the event outside South Africa were Kenya and Zimbabwe which were co-hosts of the event. I was constrained to give notice of this event in the face of the studied indifference or perhaps more appropriately the ignorance of this competition in this country. Then, I wrote an article in the Guardian which I called ‘The other World cup’. I was most pleasantly surprised when a couple of people told me that although they had no knowledge of cricket before reading my piece, they were sufficiently encouraged to follow the competition on DStv. More than twenty years on, they are still passionate about the game.

I have said on several occasions that one of my greatest accomplishments of my career was to pass the highly competitive entrance examination to Igbobi College. It is an experience that may no longer be replicated in contemporary Nigeria. There are elite schools in Nigeria today but getting into one of them is a question of cash and carry. Students can no longer walk off the street as it was possible to do in those far off days. I must confess rather shame facedly however that with my parents being accomplished teachers, I was not one of the geniuses who just strolled off the streets into Igbobi College but I can assure you that there were quite a number of such strange animals not just in the school but in my class. I won’t say anything more about such freaks because this piece is about a game and that being the case, there really is no space for nerds in this corner.

I passed that entrance examination with some room to spare but maybe I needed some rest from the academic grind which propelled me into the school. Weeks into my first term, I was still celebrating my entrance examination success on the vast playing fields of Igbobi College, an exercise which was not exactly compatible with academic excellence. My report at the end of that first term was less than stellar and the second term results were only marginally better but still in disaster zone. There was still hope for a redeeming outcome in the third term and I was determined to get my act together, at least enough to be promoted to the next class at the end of the year.

The third term started right enough but whatever determination I had to do well evaporated within a few days and the memory of what happened has stayed fresh in my mind all these years. Only a few days into the term, Mr. Bicknell my housemaster and Maths teacher walked into the class to inform us that afternoon prep for that day had been cancelled and instead the class was to assemble on the field in our whites and canvass shoes. We did not exactly burst into cheers but we were in a state of excitement at the prospect of not having to sit at our desk that fine afternoon. We reported to the field promptly at the appointed time as we had to do for any assembly and listened with rapt attention as Mr. Bicknell spun a yarn about a game which only one of us had played before. Had I listened with such attention to Mr. Bicknell in the maths class, as I did to what he was telling us about cricket I would have been alright. After his little speech, it was time for a practical demonstration and that day a cricket bat was put in my hands and glory be, a hard cricket bat was thrown in my direction. My reflex reaction was immediate. I took a step towards the ball and hit it with surprising power and authority. I felt that stroke in every part of my body and like a true junky after his first fix, I was hooked on the game of cricket for life as it has turned out.

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I did not find it difficult to accept that being an Igbobian conferred an elite status because I was surrounded by unmistakable signs of that status. What I came to know later was that the game of cricket was perhaps the last sign of my elitism if only because cricket was part of the curriculum in only a handful of the top schools in the land. Several years later when I fetched up at the University of Ife, I was immediately recognised as being part of an elite group when I turned out for the university cricket team.

Up till today, I have not been able to quite explain how I managed to pass the promotion exam at the end of that torrid first year. This is because from that first day of introduction to cricket I could think of nothing else but cricket. To make my situation worse, many of my classmates were similarly afflicted and there was no getting away from the game which occupied all our waking moments to the exclusion of virtually everything else. Cricket is a game of bat and ball and we found a way of turning all everyday objects into a bat or ball. Every stick was a potential bat and we raided every orange tree for hard unripe fruits which were transformed into cricket balls, at least in our fertile imagination but our greatest improvisation was to use empty milk tins which assumed a roundness of shape after being pounded enthusiastically with a hard stick which as far as we were concerned, was a makeshift cricket bat. Needless to say, we were transported into seventh heaven whenever we could lay our hands on proper cricket bats and balls.

My dexterity with bat and ball was exposed very early on which meant that I was one of the first to be chosen on any team for our interminable scratch games and glory be, I was drafted into my house junior cricket team in my first year which made me a minor celebrity throughout the school because I had achieved that in spite of the limit of my small frame.

I spent all my spare time and more playing one form of cricket or the other. My one other preoccupation was reading cricket books. How many books on football can a young boy read? Maybe the odd one or two. Not the case with cricket. The school library was full of cricket books and I contrived to read and digest them all. Apart from books about all the individual technical aspects of the game, there was a profusion of biographies of the more famous players going back to the dawn of the twentieth century. There were also books about some of the legendary cricket teams of the past. I read them all which left very little time for me to get up close and personal with my extremely full school books. Somehow I squeezed myself through my own personal door of no return and from then on, lost all fear of failure in all subsequent examinations. I reasoned that if I was able to pass that particular examination with virtually no preparation, I could assume that I could pass any examination as long as I set my mind to it.

The game of cricket was invented in England in the darkness of the Middle ages and evolved over more than three centuries before it assumed its current form. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century before it assumed the form in which it could be recognised by players and spectators today. The first universal laws of the game were first codified by members of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at the Lords Cricket grounds in London in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Although the governing body of cricket is now the International Cricket Council (ICC), the headquarters of cricket remains the Lords Cricket grounds or Lords for short. That is the Mecca of cricket and it is the dream of every international cricketer to walk out at Lords on at least one occasion and the gods of cricket are those who score a century on the hallowed turf at Lords or take five wickets in an innings. Such performances are faithfully recorded in history and retold countless times by ancient men and women who were privileged to have an eye witness account of those feats.

When I made up my mind to write this article I thought quite seriously of giving it the title, “Beyond the boundary” in recognition of the title of what has been described as the finest book on cricket. The writer CLR James published the book, Beyond a boundary in 1938 and it was as fresh as a warm loaf of bread when entranced; I read it forty years later. I have an intense longing to read it again but my copy disappeared long ago and a replacement copy has eluded me. CLR James was born in Trinidad and died in London eighty-seven years later. He, at one time was the cricket correspondent of the Manchester Guardian long before it moved to London and became just the Guardian. He was a journalist, writer, playwright and a teacher who had the privilege of teaching the great Eric Williams history in the secondary school. For good measure, he was a committed socialist, political activist and life long Pan-Africanist who devoted his many talents to fighting for the freedom of Africans everywhere from all forms of bondage.  No wonder he had such passion for cricket, a game which appeals to the fairness of human nature, a game which demands  fanatical commitments to the rule of its many laws. Cricket is played in many ways, the sedateness of the English, the grit of the South Africans, the passion of the people’s of the Indian sub-continent, the panache of our cousin’s from the West Indies and the studiousness of the New Zealanders, the game is everywhere always played with decorum within the boundaries of the law.

I came away from Igbobi College with many precious accouchements in my bag of life. Cricket is a prominent occupant of that bag. And, Congratulations to Igbobi College and all Igbobians past and present on the occasion of the celebration of the Igbobi College ninety-third Founders day today.

Cricket, lovely cricket – calypso composed to celebrate the first test series victory of the West Indies over England.

• The series on capitalism resumes next week.