The boundaries of cricket
Arts on Sunday
By Al Creighton
Stabroek News
April 8, 2007
Long before the World Cup was even born, CLR James brought cricket into focus in the West Indies in a way which was so relevant and unforgettable that it influenced many other writers and is playing itself out now in very real terms. James's writings drew attention not only to the entertainment and the history, but to the sociology and the politics of cricket. These vital elements have interested and inspired the writers of history, drama, poetry and fiction in their study of cricket as much more than a game. The West Indies now play host to the World Cup and the way the competition has so far unfolded serves to dramatise the reality of what the writers have been reflecting. It is much more than metaphor, and nowhere is it better illustrated than in public and popular reaction in India (especially) and Pakistan to their teams' exit, and in the West Indies to the precarious position of the home team in the competition.
A number of significant works have emerged since the late 1960s in which Caribbean poets and dramatists have turned their attention to these deeper implications of cricket. Some of them are famous pieces from Eddie Kamau Brathwaite, Stanley French, Derek Walcott, Eddie Baugh, Edgar Mittelholzer, Paul Keens Douglas, Dave Martins and the 2006-2007 Jamaica Pantomime Howzatt! Similar attention in non-fiction has come from Hilary Beckles, Winston McGowan, Clem Seecharan, Frank Birbalsingh and Michael Manley.
If there is a single work that can claim to have provided the foundation for this brand of scholarship and literature, it is most likely to be Beyond A Boundary. This book had such impact and influence that multitudes who have heard the name of CLR James associate him with that publication and remember him as a writer of a cricket book. Although the importance of that great document is considerable, James's legacy covers much wider ground. He was one of the most important Caribbean intellectuals of the twentieth century with outstanding contributions in the fields of history, politics/political thought, literature, sociology and sport.
In literature, he was associated with the early attempts by native West Indians to establish literary magazines and journals through his pioneering work in the Beacon Group in Trinidad from 1929 to the late 1930s. Along with Alfred Mendez, Albert Gomes and RAC de Boissiere, he founded the magazines Trinidad and Beacon during those years, bringing into prominence and promoting the development of local writing in its own language, about its own proletarian situations for its own audience. These made significant contributions to the development of social realism in the region. After these early ventures he continued and enhanced his career in England where he lived from the end of the 1930s except for periods in the USA and return to Trinidad in the 1960s.
He contributed to literary criticism through the efforts already mentioned, but also through his own literary output and his many essays on a wide range of American and West Indian literature. One of his outstanding pieces in this area is his criticism of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick, which focuses the political and sociological analyses for which he is famous and which is highlighted in Beyond A Boundary. His creative works are relatively few, but powerful in their influence, literary worth and importance. The leading piece of fiction is the novel Minty Alley (1933) set in a Port-of-Spain tenement yard. His celebrated drama is Black Jacobins (1936), originally titled Toussaint L'Ouverture about the hero of the Haitian Revolution. This work is often confused with James's historical account of the same subject, which carries a similar title, The Black Jacobins, and from which he extracted the plot of the play.
James's personal politics did two main things for him: it helped to shape his various contributions to literature and political thought, and it helped to get him into trouble. His leanings during the 1930s in Trinidad were obviously proletarian, and he was later known as a communist, venturing into Trotskyism. This caused him to be banned from the USA for a while and was partly responsible for the failure of his political ambitions in Trinidad. He returned home to support and work with Eric Williams who came to power in 1956, but had serious fallings-out with the Prime Minister in the sixties, was placed under house arrest, and met little success as an independent politician.
He had a much better time with political activism in London, where he was a part of progressive movements including support for Marcus Garvey. His play had its world premiere there with the American Paul Robeson in the lead role as Toussaint. Robeson was a fellow communist known as much for his radical politics as for his extraordinary talent and his career as a singer and an actor. Not surprisingly, in his later years, James lived in Brixton, the South London borough known for its Black immigrants, racial angst and political turmoil.
For a while James was also a cricket correspondent in England and this was, in large measure, responsible for some of his writings on the game. But his coverage went far beyond the boundary, and the title he chose for that famous book suggests that so does cricket. Although that publication is only a part of his achievements and to limit him to cricket as so many do, is to seriously devalue his work, Beyond A Boundary is indeed a very important factor in James's high place in philosophical thought. It carries his pioneering contribution to what has become a major academic discipline and underscores the social and political implications of cricket as a tradition in the British Empire and its continuing legacy in the former colonies.
Furthermore, James's discourse is not only intellectual engagement, as there is living proof of its truth and practical applicability in the reality of popular attitudes to cricket in India. In the sub-continent it has a passionate following of hundreds of millions for whom it is not mere entertainment but serious business capable of greatness, heroism and national pride, but also having the ability to cause death, fires and riots as well as the creation of wealth for players and gamblers alike. There was serious concern for the players who had to return to India and Pakistan after early failure in the World Cup. While there is no comparable violence in the Caribbean, there is a similar consciousness of cricket as a colonial legacy, as a weapon through which the empire strikes back at the former colonials, beating them at their own game.
The entire Caribbean was angry and disappointed when the West Indies lost a crucial match to South Africa and the captain Richie Richardson was sufficiently lacking in consciousness and sensitivity to try to shrug it away by saying it was just another game. Sentiments were similarly high when South Africa, having just been readmitted to Test cricket in 1991, made their first ever tour of the West Indies and were beaten by the hosts in a sensational match in Barbados. It was more than a game; it was the satisfaction that came from battering a team that for the entire previous history of Test cricket represented apartheid, racism and the oppression of Black and Asian people. It was a blow against a hostile political system.
In Beyond A Boundary James writes about the colonial background to those developments, among several other things. He is able to admire great cricketers, to discuss the art and science, the beauty and nobility of the game. He discusses West Indian players of previous generations and goes into their backgrounds and the history of the game. However, in delving into this background he provides insightful analyses of senior club cricket in the Caribbean, highlighting the barriers of class, colour and race, as well as their own brand of apartheid in the cricket clubs of the English colonies. There are references to the English tradition of the aristocratic "amateurs" versus the working class "professionals" and their places in the hierarchical divisions of the society reflected in the cricket clubs and teams.
James alerts his audience to the sociology and the politics of cricket that takes it beyond a game and beyond the boundaries. He is, at the same time, conscious of his own metaphors, since the boundaries are not only those to be found on the cricket field, but those which exist in the society, separating its people, fragmenting its consciousness. Serious historians like Beckles, McGowan and Seecharan have been continuing similar preoccupations, and contemporary readers can become aware of these boundaries that did not entirely disappear with colonialism and were not entirely erased by independence. Exclusively Portuguese, French Creole, Chinese, White, Coloured or East Indian clubs have either become entirely integrated or have disappeared but legacies and traditions still hang over.
Following James, these are the extra-boundary elements of cricket that Caribbean writers such as Brathwaite, Mittelholzer, Baugh, Walcott and French tend to focus on when that game becomes their theme or subject. They will also go beyond that into other related traditions of cricket as a social occasion or social event, or into the humour that such occasions may provide, as Baugh, Keens-Douglas and Martins do. Perhaps most spectators are less interested in the technicalities of the game and more in the social event. Cricket is associated as much with sport as with sporting. There is a tradition of 'curry goat' cricket or 'fête matches,' while rum will flow as freely and roti and curry hold as much currency in the stands during serious matches. Cricket easily becomes an excuse for drinking, feasting or socialising, but the exact nature of these exchanges is being significantly altered in Test and One-day internationals today.