No Win Race. Derek A. Bardowell

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ there been any doubt that Lloyd would use the same tactics against England later that summer, it was all but erased when England’s South African born captain Tony Greig said: ‘I think people tend to forget it wasn’t that long ago they [the West Indies] were beaten 5–1 by the Australians and only just managed to keep their heads above water against the Indians just a short time ago as well … You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of Closey and a few others, to make them grovel.’

      Coming from a South African commenting on a team comprising black and Asian players, Greig’s statement carried racist connotations. The West Indies would make Greig grovel with one of the most brutal displays of fast bowling witnessed in England and one of the greatest batting performances by Viv Richards. During the Test matches in 1976, Richards scored 829 runs at an average of 118. The West Indian team won the five-match Test series 3–0 (two games were drawn) and all three one-day matches. The seventies version of the West Indies had been brought up in an independent Caribbean. They were more politicised, less willing to comply and keen, once and for all, to erase the image of Calypso Cricketers.

      The West Indies’ ascendancy coincided with a period of increased activism by Britain’s black communities. The Windrush generation, the first set of Caribbean migrants to enter these shores en masse, were amenable. They had been ‘hunted’ down by the British. Post-war prosperity meant that Britain did not have enough workers, or at least enough willing workers to fulfil labour-market shortages in the new NHS, in transport. So, they sold the ‘British Dream’ to Caribbean citizens. The prospect of a new life, a better life. Britain did not have to pay for their schooling, their health or their housing up to that point. They were ‘ready-made workers’. But Britain was not prepared for its new arrivals. Didn’t think they needed to adjust. Wanted them to integrate. No questions asked. Shut up, be happy. All the run-down places and spaces that the now affluent white working-class people had vacated were now populated by the emergent Caribbean community.

      For many of the Windrush generation, England had not been a dream. By the early seventies, opportunities and living conditions for their children had not vastly improved either. Jamaican-born poet Linton Kwesi Johnson encapsulated how many black people felt throughout the seventies when he sang ‘Inglan is a bitch’. Two generations were fed up. Fed up of being forced to integrate without a say, to de-colourise; fed up of poor working conditions, fed up of poor schooling, poor housing; fed up of having to minimise to progress.

      By the seventies, it had become difficult for Britain to ignore the rising cultural and political presence of black Britain. This included cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall, the rise of the Notting Hill Carnival, the continued wisdom, writing and leadership of C L R James, the activism of Darcus Howe and Althea Jones-Lecointe, the victory of the Mangrove Nine which led to the first acknowledgement of racial hatred within the Metropolitan Police, the music of Aswad, Janet Kay and Steel Pulse.

      Whether it was the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson, the rise of the Organisation for Women of Asian and African Descent and the Black Parents Movement, the proliferation of supplementary schools, the black publications that saw the light of day through Margaret Busby’s Allison & Busby and John La Rose’s New Beacon Books, or the Race Today Collective and the Institute of Race Relations holding power to account, black Britain had been gaining its identity, growing confident in its identity, creating platforms for self-knowledge and self-determination. So much of what these academics, artists, original intersectional feminists and activists fashioned had originally been ignored by mainstream institutions. We didn’t exist. Black didn’t exist. But these pioneers shoved their way through, often with minimal resource and against extreme opposition.

      Fuelled by the activism and music of the Caribbean, Africa and the United States, the children of the Windrush generation took up the fight. They were actively fighting back with greater force, no longer fearful of the consequence and attracting white comrades to the struggle.

      During this period, the West Indies continued to dominate cricket. They had won two World Cups (1975 and 1979) and been finalists in 1983, they had exacted revenge on Australia after the 1975 series and emerged from Kerry Packer’s World Series ‘Supertests’ and one-day series against Australia and a World XI as arguably the world’s most dominant side.

      The 1984 West Indies team had a distinct set of characters, particularly its fast bowlers. Each had unique bowling actions that appeared to speak volumes about their approach to the game. They were led by Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel Garner. Marshall would charge in and bowl at such pace that he appeared to be moving faster than the ball once it was released from his hands. But he had craft and guile. Holding was graceful, haunting, elegant. He would glide in to bowl effortlessly, quietly, only to unleash deceptively vicious balls, which is why he had the nickname ‘Whispering Death’. And Joel Garner, all six feet eight inches of him, bundled in like an old man with a stitch running for the bus, only to uncoil at the last minute, lengthy like the Statue of Liberty, before delivering the ball so quick, so accurate, so full in length, he would make the batsmen jerk violently as if a rug had been pulled from beneath them. Missing from the 1984 tour was Andy Roberts: no-nonsense, stoic and the ‘father’ to all these bowlers, the man through which the West Indies’ fearsome reputation had been established.

      The West Indies remained the favourites in 1984, although there had been some belief that England could push them. In the 1983 World Cup Final, India surprisingly defeated the West Indies. India had made a modest 183 runs and it appeared as if the West Indies would run away with a third World Cup in a row. Inspired by captain Kapil Dev, India rattled the West Indies out for a paltry 140 in one of the greatest upsets in cricket history.

      In 1982, the West Indies had also lost some of their best players to a rebel tour in South Africa, at that point banned from international cricket due to apartheid. South Africa had been desperate to get back on the world sporting stage, so they started offering large sums of money to teams, mainly in cricket and rugby, to tour illegally. Nelson Mandela would later say that the sporting ban contributed to his freedom and indeed the end of the apartheid regime.

      The first target had been Viv Richards. By 1983, he was acknowledged by many of his contemporaries as the greatest player in the world, and the greatest batsman since Australia’s legendary Don Bradman. Imran Khan, currently the Prime Minister of Pakistan and one of the great all-round cricketers in history, called Richards ‘a complete genius … no other batsman could attack me when I was at my peak’.⁴ Dennis Lillee, arguably the greatest fast bowler in history, said, in his autobiography Menace, that ‘for sheer ability to rip an attack apart, animal brutality and no fear in taking you on, I have to put Viv Richards on top of the list’. In 2000, Wisden would vote him as one of the five greatest players of the century, alongside Bradman, Sobers, Aussie spinner Shane Warne and English batsman Jack Hobbs.

      His refusal to go to South Africa in 1983 had been symbolic. He was the best player in the world. The prize catch. If ever there had been a symbol of West Indies’ shift from Calypso Cricketers, Englishmen with brown skin, and colonial subjects to anti-racists, to independence, to rebels, it had been Richards. Wearing a red, gold and green wristband, the sight of Richards strutting from the pavilion to the batting crease was as dramatic and intimidating as watching Mike Tyson walk to a boxing ring. Richards would scan the audience and the opposing team as if they were his subjects. He would walk to the crease as if failure was not an option. In an era of hostile fast bowling, where Richards faced the likes of Lillee and Thomson from Australia, Imran Khan from Pakistan and his West Indian teammates, who he regularly faced in the English County Championship, Richards never wore a helmet. He had been a king without security, a superstar without a bodyguard, a target without protection.

      Had Richards gone to South Africa, his departure would have signalled the premature death of West Indian cricket dominance and indeed all that the team had stood for since 1976. It would have opened СКАЧАТЬ