By Dr. Richard A. Byron-Cox
Cricket is natural to the socio-cultural makeup of the Anglophone Caribbean. So much so, we once upon a time dominated this game learnt from the British, our enslavers for centuries, who still refuses to apologise and pay reparations for that and other evils! Caribbean philosophers, playwrights and poets, reggae and calypso maestros, politician and layman, all cherish the role of this game in helping to shape who we are. From the serious and sublime, to the exotic and funny, cricket is integral to the life we live, and is expressed with genuine fervour equally in Malcolm Marshall’s superb bowling on the field, and “Tanty Merle’s” frantic excitement in the stand. Like breadfruit in SVG, ackee in Jamaica, saltfish and pigtail, which with our ingredients became Caribbean culinary culture, while never forgetting they were feed to us as we languished chained to plantations, so too we made cricket our own by adding the spice of our joyous and free human spirit.
In “Beyond a boundary” C.L.R. James elucidates the impact of cricket on him affirming, “Cricket had plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it. When I did turn to politics, I did not have too much to learn.” Lamming, Naipaul, Lovelace and Selvon all had their say on cricket and us. But it’s in music one feels our passion for this game we used to turn the racists, imperialists, colonialists, former slave masters into our whipping boys! “Cricket lovely cricket, you have to lick de ball before it reach de wicket,” sings Jah Thomas. Sparrow, Short Shirt and many more heap praises on heroes like magnificent Sobers, and Master Blaster, Viv Richards for their exploits. Test cricket is our lady of class, style and beauty, played by these stars at stadiums and other professional grounds around the world. But she had long captured their hearts as boys playing on little village greens, on dirt roads, and on beaches, using any round fruit as ball, and a chopped-off coconut branch, or a piece of broad as bat. With these crude instruments, they mastered the game and conquered beat the world!
Unlike Ms Cricket, who is played in a space with boundaries, Mr. Carnival demands absolute freedom; bacchanalia on the streets. He displays his wares, colours, rhythms, and creative genius, in a concerted attempt to break completely with the vestiges of a culturally stifling colonialism. He’s disdainful of opera and so-called classical music; as well as European “society balls” with face mask. Come Mardi Gras, calypso is his voice and steel band his symphony, as the street explodes with creative designs and the kaleidoscope born of freed souls. Mr. Carnival ignores class, colour and everything that stands in the way of national cultural harmony, insisting we break the monotony of everyday routine, meet each other on common ground, joining souls into a collective of fun and frolic, if only for a few hours in a year. He watches no face, makes no judgements in this, our reclamation of an independence of spirt which the slave master tried so hard to kill.
Our Caribbean knows no other passions where we celebrate on such a mass scale in public. Ms Cricket and Mr Carnival naturally belong together in our world, for they are played with the same spirit; one which refuses to be bound by European “cultural” conventions. That spirit gave birth to “Calypso Cricket,” for which we are known around the world. But I don’t recall the two ever being married, that is, until now. The marriage is this June-July, when these two great Caribbean traditions are set for a cultural-sporting explosion as world cup cricket meet Vincy Mass, reigniting the spirit that drove us to dominate this game for almost two decades.
The national, regional, and global matrimony of our Ms Cricket and Mr. Carnival will finally happen in this the land of Mike Findlay, Winston Davis, Drs Alston “Becket” Cyrus and Frankie “The Maestro” Mckintosh. When Vincies pull out all the stops, we put on a show like no other. As the teams prepare to arrive on these shores, our reservoir of culture is being opened by mass men, pan men, and calypsonians. Our populace at large must join to ensure that the cricketing world experience a sporting-cultural extravaganza never before seen! We must not, simply cannot betray this, our heritage of freedom, creativity, and cultural independence, and thereby dishonour the very special Vincentian component of our Caribbean civilisation, to borrow from Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. But worse still, it will be unpardonable should we fail to use this moment to be so brilliant that the world will have to pause and “give our country a round of applause and say, congratulation!”
