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Class, Race and Cricket in West Indies Cricket: A Review of C. L. R.

James’ Beyond A Boundary

What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? To answer

involves ideas as well as facts.1

In all of his work, it is the recognition of the vitality and validity of

the independent Negro struggle that serves as James’s guide. and the

vitality of the

James did not go into cricket with his politics, but came to his

politics out of cricket.2

Often called the “Bible” of cricket, CLR James’ Beyond A Boundary is the most

complete study of cricket done through perhaps the most brilliant and the keenest student

the game has ever had. James’ idea that one has to know something more than cricket to

understand it stands a testimony not only to the game but also to the genius of the man,

who viewed the game as a contested terrain, an art form and also as a mode of self

expression. For James cricket was not only a site where racial stereotypes and hierarchies

were reproduced, and enforced but is also the one terrain where these perceived notions

could be questioned challenged and changed. For James cricket was at one level a game,

while at another level it something more than game. Cricket for James was drama, a

contest, an art, a window to experience life etc. Cricket in the West Indies, as elsewhere

1 Preface XXI, James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary 2 Hartmann, Douglas. ‘What can we learn from sport, if we take sport seriously as a racial force? Lessons from C.L.R. James’s Beyond A Boundary,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, May 2003 pages 451-483.

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was intertwined with the societal formations, and in the case of West Indies the game was

linked closely to the aspects of race, class, and at times to caste.

Manthia Diawara, in his article ‘Englishness and Blackness: Cricket as

Discourse on Colonialism’3 has successful argued that the privilege of playing cricket in

West Indies was Englishness, while the inability was Blackness. Cricket was one of the

privileges that came along with white skin. Mike Marqusee in his Any One But England:

An Outsider looks at English Cricket argues that the English prided on the fact that the

Americans did not play cricket, and that the English view Cricket, and the ability to play

the game as their privilege. It is in this context that James becomes very important. As he

himself described, James was a puritan and a rebel at the same time. While the likes of

his grandmother, and aunts instilling the notions of belief, fair play etc., W.C. Grace,

Thomas Arnold, the school and Christianity strengthened it. While at school, for a

composition paper, James, when asked to write a composition on any topic, wrote about a

cricket match between Oxford and Cambridge that he had read about earlier. James as a

schoolboy was in awe of the English game and of the literature played the game in

complete. As James says

Two people lived in me: one the rebel against all

family and school discipline and order; the other, a Puritan who would

have cut off a finger sooner than do anything contrary to the ethics of the

game.4

While the colonialists for entertaining themselves played cricket in the

beginning, the game was extended to the coloured races in the Caribbean islands as to

3 See Diawara, Manthia. ‘Englishness and Blackness: Cricket as a Discourse on Colonialism,’ Callaloo 13 (1990).4 James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary, p. 28

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civilise them. This civilising tool soon found its way into schools, among workers etc.

Most cricket in the islands was organised around clubs, which were quite exclusive.

James ideas on the game and race were formed in the school that he attended, the

premises of the Tunapuna Cricket Club, the club cricket structure that was prevalent in

Trinidad, through the writings of Neville Cardus, and most importantly through the game

played by various clubs in Trinidad. James said that cricket was the window for the

Caribbean ‘self expression,’ in Manthia Diawara’s word cricket was the black player’s

ticket to Englishness.

Born into a puritanical, educated black family in Tunapuna, some miles

away from the capital city of Port of Spain, in Trinidad; James earliest impressions on life

and of the game were formed by the black players practicing or playing at the Tunapuna

Cricket Club. Apart from his puritanical family, his other influence were the cricketers

including his pariah neighbor, a superb cricketer Mathew Bondman. James’s relatively

well-off, puritanical aunts and grandmother often scoffed at Bondman, who went

barefoot, scowled at people, was unemployed and swore at everybody. Mathew Bond

man’s play at the crease thrilled the young James to no end. While describing the batting

of Bondman, James says:

Mathew, so crude and vulgar in every aspect of his life,

with a bat was all grace and style. When he practised on an afternoon with

the local club people stayed to watch and wake away when he finished. He

had one particular stroke that he played going down low on knee. It may

have been a slash to the covers or a sweep to the leg. But, whatever it was,

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whenever Mathew sank down and made it, a long, ‘Ah!’ came from many

a spectator, and my own little soul thrilled with recognition and delight.5

Characters like Mathew Bondman filled the mind of James. James while dwelling

on Bondman further says

‘Good for nothing except to play cricket,’ did not seem

right to me. How could an ability to play cricket atone in any sense for

Mathew’s abominable way of life. Particularly as my grandmother and my

aunts were not in any way supporters or followers of the game.6

While his family forbade him from interacting with players like Bondman etc.,

they did not dissuaded from talking to his uncle Cudjoe, who was a blacksmith. Cudjoe

was as colourful as Bondman, yet Cudjoe played with the white men in a white team.

James, while talking of his family informs us of his grandfather’s fetish to go to the

church on a Sunday morning dressed in a hat, coat and walking stick; and of his family’s

desire of not falling short of affording this attire while going to the church.

When it came to join a club for the game, James had to choose from one

of the three available clubs that Blacks could join. Club cricket in Trinidad was based

strictly on race and class. While the more elite, white Protestants were the part of the

Queen’s Park Club; the well to do old Catholics joined the Shamrock. While both these

clubs admitted the powerful coloured families, still a black man was not welcomed to

these clubs. While discussing these clubs James says

5James, CLR. Beyond a Boundary. P. 4 6 Ibid. p.5

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A black man in the Queen’s Park was rare and unusually

anonymous: by the time he had acquired status or made enough money to

be accepted he was much too old to play.7

He further adds

I would have been more easily elected to the M.C.C. than to either

(Queen’s Park Club or Shamrock).8

The clubs that were meant for the coloured people were Shannon, Stingo and

Maple. While Maple, the club that James finally joined, was made of the well to do

brown population, Stingo was completely made of plebeians. Shannon, the club, which

produced the likes of Constantines, St. Hill, and three Ws etc. was made of the lower

class blacks. James in many instances rues the fact that he had not joined the Shannon

inspite of them contacting him.

James were of the opinion that Shannon definitely the best side in the

island, knew that they were representing the majority of the Caribbean population. They

knew that most of the population looked up to their clubs success, and jealously

enthusiastic crowds often supported them. Stingo never enjoyed the same success nor the

support. Stingo, according to James never represented the hopes and ambitions of the

black population of the island, as most of its players were plebeians. James brings out the

element of class with in the context of race when he says

The crowd did not look at Stingo in the same way. Stingo did not

have status enough. Stingo did not show that pride and impersonal

ambition which distinguished Shannon.

7 Ibid. P. 498 Ibid. P.50

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The Shannon team, according to James played as if all men were equal on the

field, and that they were the best at cricket. Maple the team that James played for never

hired the proletarian or the plebeian black. The club structure was so strictly based on

race that a very promising black cricketer would not be welcomed into the brown or

mulatto clubs. The mulattos were not welcomed by the white clubs. While discussing the

issue of clubs, race and colour James says

Associations are formed of brown people who will not admit into

their numbers those too much darker than themselves, and there have been

heated arguments in committee as whether such and such person’s skin

was fair enough to allow him or her to be admitted without lowering the

tone of the institution. Clubs have been known to accept the daughter who

was fair and refuse the father who was black.9

In the same breath James adds

Should the darker man, however, have money or position of some

kind, he may aspire, and it is not too much to say that in a West Indian

colony the surest sign of a man having arrived is the fact that he keeps the

company with people lighter in complexion than himself.10

In the chapter ‘Prince and Pauper,’ James brings out the reasons behind the

success of Learie Constantine and while in the chapter ‘The Most Unkindest Cut’ he tries

to seek the reasons for the failure of the very talented St. Hill. St. Hill and Constantine jr.

played for Shannon side, and were from a proletarian background. While Learie

Constantine was a success in Lancashire League, West Indies cricket and at International

9 Ibid. P. 51.10Ibid. P. 52

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level, St. Hill best years in international cricket were wasted due to acrimonious selection

policies. The selectors would always play white batsman and black bowlers, and with Joe

Small of the Stingo side making into the side, St. Hill a superb batsman was generally

ignored. James correctly points out that Learie Constantine’s success had much to do

with the fact that he belonged to the first family of West Indies cricket, which saved from

being a victim of the racial selectors.

James, as he himself says, in the 1930s did not support nor believe Learie’s view

that the West Indies team had to be led by a black captain. As mentioned earlier, the

puritan in him believed that the best man, be it black, white or brown had to lead the

team. It was the general practise in West Indies cricket that a white man was always

made the captain of the team. James notions of equality were shaken when Frank

Worrell, arguably the best captaincy material in the team was not made the West Indies

captain. Inspite of the coloured players being more in number in the team, most white

administrators of the game in West Indies were of the opinion that a black man, having

no pedigree or etiquette would find it hard to captain the side. James while writing on this

issue says

The more brilliantly the black people played, the more it would

emphasise to millions of English people: ‘Yes, they are fine players, but,

funny, isn’t it, they cannot be responsible for themselves-they must always

have a white man to lead them11.

James is of the opinion that it is in West Indies that politics interferes the most

with cricket. In this chapter ‘Proof of the Pudding,’ perhaps the best written in the history

of the sport, James while talking about cricket, race etc. brings out the reasons for the

11 Ibid. p. 233

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support of a black captain. He had definitely reversed his Victorian, puritanical stance

that the captain should be the best man in the team, not in the terms of game alone but

otherwise.

James explicitly points out the reasons why cricket is so dear to West Indies. In

what is perhaps the most touching paragraph in the book, James says

What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? West

Indians crowding to Tests bring with them the whole past history and the

future hopes of the islands. English people, for example, have a

conception of themselves breathed from birth. Drake and mighty Nelson,

Shakespeare, Waterloo, the charge of the Light Brigade, the few who did

so much for so many, the success of parliamentary democracy, those and

such as those constitute a national tradition. Underdeveloped countries

have to go back to centuries to rebuild one. We of the West Indies have

none at all, none that we know of. To such people the three W’s, Ram and

Val wrecking English batting, help to fill a huge gap in their

consciousness and in their needs. In one of the sheds on the Port of Spain

wharf is a painted sign: 365 Garfield’s Sobers. If the old Maple-Shannon-

Queen’s Park type of rivalry was now insignificant, a national jealousy

had taken its place.12

It is for these reasons that James was all for making Frank Worrell the captain of

the West Indies on their tour to Australia. While the Prime Minister and other members

of the cabinet were black men, the captain of the team till James and his intervened was

always a white man. On this question James says

12 Ibid. p. 233

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It is the constant, vigilant, bold and shameless manipulation of

players to exclude black captains that has so demoralized West Indian

teams and exasperated the people- a people, it is to be remembered, in the

full tide of transition from colonialism to independence.13

He later adds

‘…Another problem in West Indies cricket is that the captain has

usually been chosen from among the European stock. Just think of the

most famous West Indies cricketers… Learie Constantine, Frank Worrell,

Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott…all are coloured, but none has led his

country. Yet Worrell was often skipper of Common Wealth tours in India,

and he did a fine job.14

While talking of race and cricket in West Indies cricket James says

The clash of race, caste and class did not retard but stimulated

West Indies cricket. I am equally certain that in those years social and

political passions, denied normal outlets, expressed themselves so fiercely

in cricket (and other games) precisely because they were games.

It is in this context that James notion of two levels of cricket, one as a game, and

the other masquerading as it becomes clear. James is of the opinion that of all games

cricket is game that is best suited to carry out various kinds of politics. While talking on

the cricket he says

13 Ibid. p. 23214 Ibid. p. 232

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Cricket is a game of high and difficult technique. If it were not it

could not carry the load of social response and implications which it

carries.15

James viewed the game as an art form whose place was with the drama, the ballet

and literature. James sharply differed with Cardus on the issue. While Cardus was also of

the view that cricket was an art, his view was that since most people could understand it,

unlike music compositions, it was not a high art or a great art. Cardus was of the view

that cricket, as an art form was lower than music, since it was popular one. It was for this

reason that Cardus who often brought music into his writings on cricket, never used

cricket in his writings on music.

For James, the game, an art form was a means of self-expression. James

believed that cricket in West Indies organized on the lines of race and

class, provided the marginalized and disempowered West Indians,

more often than not, an unparalleled medium of social interaction,

communication and self-expression. It was through cricket that a

source of social solidarity, collective identity and group pride, was

ushered in the West Indies. West Indian teams and star players served

as symbols of the entire community, rallying points, a way to establish

collective identities and express collective sentiments. Be it Constantine or

George Challenor, George Headley, or St. Hill, cricket was the only place where they

expressed themselves. More than the natural ability of the cricketer, it was the

responsibility, and the challenge that made the West Indian cricketer innovative. While

talking of the batting of some of the West Indian players, James says

15 Ibid. P. 34.

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Test match or no Test match. If I am not mistaken, in Sobers,

‘Collie’ Smith, and Kanhai I have seen the same spirit fighting for

expression against the heavy burdens that were unexpectedly placed upon

them in 1957.16

James was of the view that the art of West Indian cricket was a product of the

racism, determination, class struggle etc. Unlike Cardus, and most other thinkers of the

Marxist school, James was of the view that art was not autonomous to life, and that

cricket is no exception. Neil Lazarus summing up the debate on art says

James writes not only against the Neville Carduses of his world,

exponents of a frankly confessed conservatism in cultural criticism, but

also against implicitly, against such radical cultural theorists as Theodor

W. Adorno, who also insist upon the “autonomy” of modern art from

life.17

James was rightly critical of the patronising attitude that the England press

adopted while it exoticised a West Indian player. While talking of one particular stroke of

Constantine, the leg-glance from outside the off stump to long-leg James says

It was not due to his marvellous West Indian eyes and marvellous

West Indian wrists. It was due, if you must have it, to his marvellous West

Indian brains. He saw that the best league bowlers were always out to pin

him down, and the conditions including the marvellous league crowds,

compelled him to work out new and safe ways of countering them.18

16 Ibid. p. 131.17 See Lazarus, Neil. ‘Cricket, modernism, national culture: the case of C.L.R. James, Nationalism and Cultural Practise, p. 150, 1995.18See James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary, p. 132.

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West Indian Cricket provided the population with

symbolic capital19 as well.

Constantine cricket took him to Lancashire and he in turned helped James publish

James political work on West Indies. The athletic intellectual and the intellectual minded

athlete20 as Paul Buhle has addressed James and Constantine provided to be the finest

specimens in England, as they went about lecturing on the needs of West Indian

independence.

James, bred on English school education, classics, and morals was of the view

that the game England and the English were the best. James believed in the spirit that was

taught in the school, adhered to the morals that were preached to him. He realised

towards the end of his schooldays the life in West Indies was completely modelled on the

English. He says

It was only long years after that I understood the limitation on

spirit, vision and self-respect which was imposed on us by the fact that our

masters, our curriculum, our code of morals, everything began from the

basis that Britain was the source of all light and leading, and our business

was to admire, wonder, imitate, learn; our criterion of success was to have

succeeded in approaching the distant ideal-to attain it was, of course,

impossible. Both masters and the boys accepted it as in the very nature of

things. As for me it was the beacon that beckoned me on.21

19 Hartmann, Douglas. ‘What can we learn from sport, if we take sport seriously as a racial force? Lessons from C.L.R. James’s Beyond A Boundary,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, May 2003 pages 451-483.20 See Buhle, Paul. ‘Political Styles of C.L.R. James: An Introduction’,C.L.R. James: His Life and Work, 1986.

21 See James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary, p. 30.

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What is disturbing in James’s book is the fact that he believes in the distinction

between the benign and the otherwise colonialists. James, though a Marxist, was

influenced by the literature of Thomas Hughes, W.C. Grace, and Thomas Arnold. James,

through these figures believes that there is a human aspect to the coloniser as well. This, I

presume is the reason why he says

Clearing the way with bat and ball, West Indians at that moment

had made a public entry into the comity of nations. Thomas Arnold,

Thomas Hughes and the Old Master himself would have recognised Frank

Worrell as their boy.22

James said these lines while describing the farewell that Frank Worrell’s men got

in Australia, which was unparalleled in the history of sport. James definitely sounded

quite optimistic here, as the racial M.C.C very soon brought in the one bouncer rule to

curb the West Indian cricket.

James’s Beyond a Boundary was supposed to be the unofficial twelfth man in the

West Indies cricket teams. No other book on cricket had captured the essence of the

cricketers, nation and the game the way James’s one did.

22 See James, C.L.R. Beyond a Boundary, p. 261.

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Bibliography

1. Buhle, Paul. ‘Political Styles of C.L.R. James: An Introduction’,C.L.R. James:

His Life and Work, 1986.

2. Diawara, Manthia. ‘Englishness and Blackness: Cricket as a Discourse on

Colonialism,’ Callaloo 13 (1990).

3. Guha, Ramachandra. ‘Black is Bountiful: C.L.R. James,’ The Last Liberal and

Other Essays, Permanent Black, 2004.

4. Hartmann, Douglas. ‘What can we learn from sport, if we take sport seriously as a

racial force? Lessons from C.L.R. James’s Beyond A Boundary,’ Ethnic and Racial

Studies, May 2003 pages 451-483.

5. Lazarus, Neil. ‘Cricket, modernism, national culture: the case of C.L.R. James,

Nationalism and Cultural Practise.

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