Giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of crick­et in the West In­dies, it is not sur­pris­ing that it is the sport that has en­gaged the imag­i­na­tion of West In­di­an writ­ers the most. A list­ing of just the ti­tles of es­says, po­ems, short sto­ries, plays, films and songs that ref­er­ence crick­et will most like­ly fill a mono­graph! So ex­pan­sive are the of­fer­ings of writ­ing about crick­et that one an­thol­o­gy of such writ­ing proud­ly and ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribes it­self as a “fat an­thol­o­gy.”

In his po­em “Rites,” Ka­mau Brath­waite de­ploys a com­bi­na­tion of na­tion lan­guage and crick­et to de­lin­eate the so­cio-po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the con­scious­ness of re­gion, thus set­ting a styl­is­tic path­way for po­ets like Paul Keens-Dou­glas (“Tan­ti at de Oval”) and fic­tion writ­ers like Jean Bin­ta Breeze (“Sun­day Crick­et”).

VS Naipaul re­port­ed on crick­et from Lord’s, cel­e­brat­ing in­di­vid­u­al­ism in a team game; Derek Wal­cott wrote about how he sucked at crick­et; and Sam Selvon lam­pooned the stereo­typ­i­cal British per­cep­tion of every West In­di­an as a crick­et sen­sa­tion. (For a sam­pling of writ­ing about crick­et, see The Bowl­ing was Su­perfine: West In­di­an Writ­ing and West In­di­an Crick­et edit­ed by Stew­art Brown and Ian Mc­Don­ald (2012) and Lunchtime Med­ley: Writ­ing on West In­di­an Crick­et edit­ed by Mervin Mor­ris and Jim­my Carnegie (2008).

The one writer who has con­scious­ly and con­sis­tent­ly built on CLR James’s philo­soph­i­cal en­gage­ment with sport is per­haps Earl Lovelace. Like James, Lovelace par­tic­i­pat­ed in a wide va­ri­ety of sports in and out of school. Lovelace sees be­yond the class analy­sis of James and ar­gues that James could talk about crick­et as a moul­der of char­ac­ter but he could not dis­cern the se­cret source of the “sight and nerve” of the leg­endary crick­eters he li­onised. Lovelace iden­ti­fies the in­vis­i­ble source of their pow­er as the non-ma­te­r­i­al en­er­gy in­her­ent in the chants and move­ments of stick­fight­ers, the rhythm of ca­lyp­so, the ca­dence of the steel­pan, the swing-low, swing-high of the cut­lass­es of grass-and cane-cut­ters, the dance of the Or­isha and the cal­cu­lat­ing in­tel­li­gence of Anan­cy.

When Lovelace writes about sport, he writes with an aware­ness of its ma­te­r­i­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact on so­ci­ety. He is as much con­cerned with an in­di­vid­ual’s re­sort to sport to ad­vance per­son­al goals of fit­ness and as a path­way to per­son­al so­cio-po­lit­i­cal des­ti­na­tions, as well as with sport as a tool for so­cial en­gi­neer­ing.

Al­though his choice sport for his main pro­tag­o­nists is ei­ther foot­ball or crick­et, there are ref­er­ences to oth­er sports rang­ing from draughts through card games, box­ing, body­build­ing, weightlift­ing, road run­ning and cy­cling in his work. In “Vic­to­ry and the Blight” (1988), he presents the game of draughts as a pas­time that al­lows play­ers to dis­play their games­man­ship as well as their ver­bal repar­tee/dex­ter­i­ty. The fram­ing of the sto­ry around a game of draughts is a styl­is­tic ploy that es­tab­lish­es the fact that just as draughts, like chess, is an in­tel­lec­tu­al game, deal­ing with peo­ple and build­ing re­la­tion­ships re­quire tact, in­tel­lect, strat­e­gy and style.

In Salt (1996), Lovelace presents both foot­ball and crick­et as tools for the de­vel­op­ment of a mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety. Through foot­ball, he ex­am­ines the in­ter­sec­tion of, and the in­ter­ac­tions be­tween, chil­dren of Eu­rope and chil­dren of Africa and, through crick­et, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Africans and In­di­ans in their New World of the Caribbean. He demon­strates that with team sports, it is the qual­i­ty and sin­cer­i­ty of par­tic­i­pa­tion that mat­ter the most. Adolphe Carabon, scion of the plan­toc­ra­cy, re­deems him­self with his non-white class­mates with his abil­i­ty to sing ca­lyp­so, play the cu­a­tro and beat iron. But it is his ex­ploits on the foot­ball field that make him their hero. His white­ness and ge­neal­o­gy are ir­rel­e­vant to them. What mat­ters is his abil­i­ty to cre­ate goal-scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties. It is, there­fore, not sur­pris­ing that, as an adult, he is the one from his fam­i­ly will­ing to con­tem­plate the need to build a po­lit­i­cal and an ide­o­log­i­cal bridge to link up with Africans and In­di­ans.

In Is Just a Movie (2011), the pshy­co-so­cial im­port of crick­et is im­mor­talised in the fig­ure of Franklyn, the icon­ic bats­man. He is the em­bod­i­ment of the hope of his com­mu­ni­ty, the rit­u­al car­ri­er of their of­fer­ings to the world, the ves­sel for their group pride and ego, and the man­i­fes­ta­tion of their artis­tic, spir­i­tu­al, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal en­er­gies. His per­for­mance at the crease is the mag­net that at­tracts Africans and In­di­ans, men and women, and the old and the young in­to the ideas of their stub­born hope and the col­lec­tive beau­ty of the vil­lage. When the vil­lagers ap­plaud him, they ap­plaud them­selves. In his ex­quis­ite bat­ting, they see their de­sires to soar come alive.

When Franklyn joins the Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion, he does so as him­self and as the spir­it of the vil­lage. And when he is con­sumed by the rev­o­lu­tion, the vil­lagers’ hope of him play­ing crick­et for the coun­try in their name is al­so con­sumed. Lovelace’s Franklyn is sym­bol­ic of the greats im­mor­talised by CLR James in Be­yond the Bound­ary and the con­tem­po­rary greats sub­se­quent­ly cel­e­brat­ed in West In­di­an lit­er­a­ture and pop­u­lar cul­ture who, as in­di­vid­u­als and as a col­lec­tive, con­tin­ue to wield sig­nif­i­cant psy­cho-so­cial in­flu­ence on a nascent Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion.

Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor Fun­so Aiye­ji­na is Head, St. Au­gus­tine Acad­e­my of Sport and can be reached at Fun­so.Aiye­ji­na@sta.uwi.edu