PROF HAMID GHANY

hamid.ghany@sta.uwi.edu

Six­ty years ago, CLR James, the renowned Trinidad-born his­to­ri­an, philoso­pher, nov­el­ist, cul­tur­al crit­ic, po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist and crick­et jour­nal­ist pub­lished his fa­mous book en­ti­tled “Be­yond A Bound­ary”. The orig­i­nal man­u­script is held at the CLR James Crick­et Re­search Cen­tre at the Cave Hill Cam­pus of The UWI in Bar­ba­dos.

Last Fri­day, The UWI paid trib­ute to James on the six­ti­eth an­niver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of his book with two events at the Cave Hill Cam­pus, name­ly a “Be­yond A Bound­ary” Sym­po­sium and a CLR James Dis­tin­guished Lec­ture. The lec­ture was de­liv­ered by Vice-Chan­cel­lor Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les.

In his ded­i­ca­tion at the start of the book, James said the fol­low­ing: “To Learie Con­stan­tine and WG Grace for both of whom this book hopes to right grave wrongs, and, in so do­ing, ex­tend our too lim­it­ed con­cep­tions of his­to­ry and of the fine arts. To these two names, I add that of Frank Wor­rell, who has made ideas and as­pi­ra­tions in­to re­al­i­ty.”

The mag­na­nim­i­ty and per­cep­tion of James shine through in this ded­i­ca­tion as he piv­ots both Learie Con­stan­tine and WG Grace to­geth­er and then adds the leg­endary Frank Wor­rell to these con­trast­ing per­son­al­i­ties and their re­spec­tive back­grounds.

In­deed, it was James, as the ed­i­tor, who lob­bied stren­u­ous­ly through the pages of “The Na­tion” (the of­fi­cial news­pa­per of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment) in 1960 for Frank Wor­rell to be made cap­tain of the West In­dies crick­et team for the tour of Aus­tralia. He start­ed his ed­i­to­r­i­al cam­paign to lob­by for Wor­rell in the Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 5, 1960 edi­tion. His lob­by­ing was suc­cess­ful as Wor­rell re­placed Ger­ry Alexan­der for the 1960-1961 tour of Aus­tralia. He be­came the first black West In­di­an man to cap­tain a tour­ing West In­dies team and his as­cen­sion to the po­si­tion was due, in large part, to the overt ad­vo­ca­cy of James.

A part of his writ­ten ad­vo­ca­cy in the Na­tion news­pa­per on Feb­ru­ary 5, 1960, read as fol­lows:

“Who have been West In­di­an Test cap­tains? Karl Nunes, Jack Grant, Rolfe Grant, John God­dard, Jeff Stollmey­er, De­nis Atkin­son, Alexan­der and a few oth­ers…Now tell The Na­tion, tell the peo­ple, tell the world. Is there one of them who, when he be­came cap­tain, had the qual­i­fi­ca­tions Wor­rell has? It is the du­ty of the Se­lec­tion Com­mit­tee and the Board of Con­trol to ex­plain why they asked Wor­rell twice when he was not avail­able, and now when he is avail­able turn him down for a man so ob­vi­ous­ly his in­fe­ri­or and un­fit­ted for the post?”

James was scathing in his ad­vo­ca­cy. How­ev­er, in ex­am­in­ing his writ­ings on mak­ing the case for Wor­rell to be­come cap­tain, one can see the be­gin­nings of a fire that was burn­ing to link a so­cio-po­lit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of West In­di­an so­ci­ety to se­cure the cap­tain­cy of the West In­dies team for Frank Wor­rell on mer­it, not on af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion terms, and to re­alise that this would frame his 1963 book “Be­yond A Bound­ary”.

In the pref­ace, he said: “…This book is nei­ther crick­et rem­i­nis­cences nor au­to­bi­og­ra­phy. It pos­es the ques­tion ‘What do they know of crick­et who on­ly crick­et knows?’ To an­swer in­volves ideas as well as facts….”

Per­haps, a poignant part of the book is ad­dressed by his con­ver­sa­tion with Learie Con­stan­tine in which he posits:

“Be­tween the wars, he nev­er ceased to ar­gue with me that af­ter Austin in 1923, the West In­dies team be­ing what it was, the cap­tain should be a black man. I op­posed him with the idea that the cap­tain should be the best man.” (Be­yond A Bound­ary, Yel­low Jer­sey Press, 2005, p 77).

James’ de­sire for mer­i­toc­ra­cy to be re­ward­ed and his op­po­si­tion to af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion is a cred­it to his de­mand­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of per­form­ing well in the face of ad­verse cir­cum­stances, rather than com­plain­ing.

How­ev­er, he pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant in­sight in­to the ba­sis of his book and of Con­stan­tine’s at­tack on the way that West In­di­an crick­et was man­aged as fol­lows:

“The old Shan­non Club of those days is a foun­da­tion pil­lar of this book. A man’s un­stat­ed as­sump­tions, those he is of­ten not aware of, are usu­al­ly the main­spring of his thought. All of Con­stan­tine’s fierce and sus­tained at­tacks against the way West In­di­an crick­et is man­aged stem from his Shan­non ex­pe­ri­ence.” (p 77).

In those few sen­tences, one can grasp James’ in­sight in­to so­ci­ety be­yond a bound­ary of crick­et.  

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.