Post-imperial preference

WE had eight players. They had 11 and were naturally eager to start straight away. I was stalling, playing for time, waiting for the US cavalry to appear on the skyline. And after a while they did. 'Ah,' I said. `Here comes our captain with the opening attack.'

The strapping white chap held no terrors for the Nicky Bird XI, but he was flanked by two equally strapping black chaps. `Oh Christ,' said Nicky, more in prayer than blasphemy. `And one of them', I said, rubbing it in, `is called Elvis.'

We won, of course, with Elvis prompting most of the opposition to take guard rather closer to the square leg umpire than is the normal practice; I, as wicket-keeper, taking my stance a few feet inside the boundary.

That moment of terror on seeing the skin colour of the two bowlers was something to savour. Caribbean roots, you see - pace like fire. All black cricketers had something of the mantle of the West Indies in those days: the best team in the world, perhaps the best ever, and certainly the most ruthless.

The same terror and defeatism that swept over poor Mr Bird in the moment of sighting the opening attack was something shared by the England cricket team, indeed by every cricket team in the world. West Indies were the rulers of the world, the masters of the universe. But now their cricket team is a dishevelled laughing-stock - dysfunctional, disunited and disaffected.

They have a captain, Brian Lara, who is in love with the captain's office without any love for the captain's task. Lara was briefly the best batsman in the world; some said the best ever. But he has become a strutting, pouting parody of himself, retained as captain partly because they could not think of anybody else, partly because nobody could bear yet another row.

It is a sad business in cricketing terms. Clive Lloyd created a master team. He is still upset that Mike Brearley, the former England captain and thinker, said that he did not possess a cricket brain. All Lloyd did as captain was to banish inter-island rivalries from the squad, to invent a professionalism of approach that was revolutionary in cricket at the time, to instigate the most effective tactic ever seen in cricket - that of four genuine fast bowlers - and to end the era of merry who-cares-if-we-lose calypso cricket. He led a team of cold, hard purpose.

Now the old empire has turned to complacency, ageing players have lost their force, internal strife has broken out, and the machine has stopped. There seems nobody able to bring back the days of global rule. West Indies have slipped back into the past.

Or have they? Perhaps the problem is simply that cricket is not attractive any longer. The boys of the Caribbean increasingly turn to basketball, to athletics, to the great college sports of the United States. There are college scholarships to be won by the good ones, and for the very good indeed there is scope for ambition and achievement and financial reward.

The sport of empire is losing its grip. The cricketing battles against the colonials and slave-masters are long won. Perhaps West Indies have not fallen 20 years behind the times, but moved 20 years ahead. Being conquered by America is so much sexier than being conquered by the Brits.

Copyright Spectator Mar 6, 1999
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