17 March 2007: C L R James and the West Indies hegemony

Following Gary Younge's Guardian piece on the hegemony of West Indies cricket in the 1970s and 1980s , and the Observer's give-away of CLR James tshirts (note: the offer still has 3 days outstanding), I thought I would remark on CLR James and this same hegemony. 

If we date the days of triumph from 1975, the West Indies' victory in the inaugural cricket world cup to 1988 (West Indies third successive overwhelming series victory over England), then for all this period James was writing about cricket. He was in his 70s and 80s admittedly, but the pen did not stop. For all this period, James' continued to publish, often on cricket. And yet he had very little to say about Richards, or Garner, or any of the "blackwash" victories.

Before 1984, and in all Test cricket history, only four full series of five games had been won by any team by a 5-0 margin. In 1984, the West Indies triumphed 5-0 in England, in 1986 they won 5-0 in the West Indies, and in 1988, they won 4-0 in England again, with one drawn test. These were absolute triumphs: the victory of a team powered by high quality pace bowling, won against the team they most wanted to humiliate. Younge quotes Michael Manley, the late Jamaican president:, "Beating England was more than a sporting success. It was the proof that a people was coming of age. They had bested the masters at their own game on their own home turf."

James celebrated the victories, in passing, but in his journalism he asked his readers to recall also the greatness of several of the earlier West Indies' sides. The present should not be allowed to overwhelm the past. As for England, he detected a pervading sickness in the team's cricket and in British society. The caution of James' analysis has echoes of his previous silence in face of overwhelming superiority (he wrote very little of Bradman, referring to him scathingly as a man who had constructed centuries, but left no mark in terms of changed social organisation). True achievement is a matter of aesthetics not statistics, and of finding a worthy opponent. James believed in contest, he felt that this West Indies team would establish its lasting greatness not by unequivocal innings victories, but in overcoming some equal rival. (The hard-won victories, when they came, were a sign of the team's impending decline).

In Beyond a Boundary, James had used the history of West Indies cricket to say something profound about the state of English cricket, and through sport, about England. The economic periphery became the perspective from which to judge rightly the centre. By the 1980s, the periphery, now magnified, had dropped out of vision.

In the midst of the above humiliating defeats, England won back the Ashes from Australia. James' penultimate piece of cricket journalism was published in 1985. Its subject was Botham, and the all-rounder's part in England's victory Botham's hitting is regulated according to custom and in the tradition of the great orthodox batsmen. He is not exact orthodox. A great batsman never is. The infallible sign of greatness is that somewhere in his method he is breaking the rules, or if not rules, the practices of his distinguished equals. Where Botham is different is that he does not want the real half volley ... I suspect that he prefers the ball a little shorter than the half volley because Botham is hitting sixes and consciously lifting the ball to do so.' The piece ended prematurely, 'Let no one think that an article of a few hundred words can deal with Botham. There will be plenty more later. One last article appeared: a comparison of Botham and Gower.

Had he been willing to conclude a revised Beyond a Boundary with one final chapter, then perhaps C. L. R. James might have ended the book with Viv Richards' team: taking pleasure in their exuberance with the bat, the ball and in the field, and commenting on the relationship between Richards and his audience. The end of direct colonial rule was still within the memory of the older members of the side. Racism, Richards had encountered for himself as a player in England. History, politics and sport were combined in the West Indies' victory. James, the artist, had all his favourite material at hand. But James' last pieces of cricket writing were dedicated not to the West Indies in their pomp but to the star player in the rival team.