Beyond a Boundary, CLR James, Serpent's Tail, £13.99 pbk
This is the best book ever written on the subject of cricket. If you think that this is a matter of no importance that's your problem. It is so good because as CLR James remarks in his own preface: 'This book is neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography. It poses the question: What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?' In Boundary James recalls an English writer's argument that the cricket ethic has shaped not only the cricketers, but West Indian social life as a whole, and remarks: 'It is an understatement.'
James dedicated this book to Learie Constantine and to WG Grace, the link between the cricket of a lost rural England and the modern game. Grace epitomised the singlemindedness, dedication and loyalty of the English gentleman. Constantine, a fellow Trinidadian of James, was a great fast bowler and a big clean hitter who played the leading role in the campaign to have a black man captain the West Indies team.
In the late 1950s that first black captain was the great Frank Worrell, the third and last dedicatee of this book. It is Worrell who initiates the age of West Indian cricket domination. I remember the awe with which as a 12-year old I watched Hall and Griffiths mow down the England batsman and Kanhai, Butcher and the incomparable Sobers take apart the England attack. Most of all Sobers, the all-rounder to whom Hadlee, Imran, Kapil and even Botham must concede pre-eminence.
Despite the continued success of the West Indies and another decade of Brian Lara to savour, those magical days are probably gone forever. The peculiar relation of West Indian society to cricket has changed. No longer is it the pre-eminent game for West Indian youth who look now to the USA and Michael Jordan. Exploitation and oppression continue, but they are no longer embodied in the innate sense of superiority of the colonial presence.
It is this experience which shaped the generation of James and those who followed him. James himself was educated in a school which followed in all its details an English public school. He learned to love not only cricket, but also Shakespeare. He also learned, as he put it, that 'the most profound loyalty can co-exist with a jealously critical attitude'. James himself was a great radical and a revolutionary, but the whole world of his upbringing was intensely loyal and knowledgeable about cricket while detesting the unjust society which had brought it.
What James is saying is that West Indians took up, transformed and threw back with a vengeance the game of their oppressors. If you think this is too heavy a load for cricket to bear think of the significance of Richards' fastest-ever test century on his home island of Antigua. Think of the blackwashes. Most poignant of all think of those days on a featherbed pitch at the Oval in 1976 when Michael Holding - all grace and athleticism - turned in the most sustained and greatest piece of fast bowling of all, until he uprooted the stumps of England's white South African captain, Tony Greig, who had boasted that he would make the Windies grovel. In the event it was England who grovelled - and they're still grovelling.
Alan Harding
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Odisio <rodisio at igc.org> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, October 14, 1999 8:34 AM Subject: Re: cricket (was: Re: Who pulled my bloody chain?)
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>Carrol Cox wrote:
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>> A gane called "baseball" is referred to in one of Austen's novels. What
>> game would that be. (Circa 1810 -- rural England.)
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>Which Austen novel? Was it called baseball or base ball? If you read the
>rest of my post about the origins of the game as it exists today, however,
>this is a matter of (idle) curiosity only. It's largely irrelevant to the
>creation of the current game.
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>btw, there was a rural variant of the simple game in the US at about the
same
>time (usually mentioned to be circa 1820).
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>RO
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