{"id":75068,"date":"2025-08-17T13:04:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T13:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/75068\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T13:04:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T13:04:06","slug":"caribbean-looks-to-revive-passion-and-pride-for-cricket-and-for-the-region-caribbean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/75068\/","title":{"rendered":"Caribbean looks to revive passion and pride for cricket \u2013 and for the region | Caribbean"},"content":{"rendered":"

When they toured overseas in the 1970s, West Indies cricketers were sometimes subjected to barrages of racist abuse. But back home in the Caribbean<\/a>, the men were heroes, with families huddled around radios and televisions whenever they played and shouts of jubilation erupting across entire communities whenever they won.<\/p>\n

Today, the generation of players who won two World Cups, in 1975 and 1979, are acclaimed as living legends for stepping up to the crease regardless of the challenges \u2013 and triumphing over teams from larger, more developed nations.<\/p>\n

And as the region celebrates Emancipation Month to commemorate the end of slavery, they have been hailed as figures of regional pride whose mastery of a game imported by the British became a powerful symbol of political and cultural resistance.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, St Vincent and the Grenadines<\/a> (SVG) hosted the first-ever Emancipation Cricket Festival, which the culture and tourism minister, Carlos James, described as a reminder of the powerful link \u201cbetween our emancipation, resistance, our Caribbean culture and the birth of Caribbean cricket\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome folks ask, why are you linking cricket \u2013 which is a game of the English \u2013 to emancipation. How does it correlate? Well, it was a period where every Caribbean national was glued to their radios \u2026 their television sets, to follow these men who went out in the middle of the cricket pitch,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n

From left to right: Veteran West Indies cricketers Sir Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran, HE Deryck Murray, Sir Andy Roberts, Sir Gordon Greenidge and Collis King stand alongside the SVG prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves (in red). Photograph: Handout<\/p>\n

By touring \u2013 and winning \u2013 that generation of sportsmen sent a powerful message, he said: \u201cThey were making a political statement that we are young Black men from small Caribbean islands \u2013 and we can dominate the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

James said that understanding the link between sport and politics \u2013 and reviving the collective passion for the game \u2013 could help turn the tide for today\u2019s West Indies team, which has performed poorly in recent games.<\/p>\n

St Vincent and the Grenadines\u2019 prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, one of the region\u2019s strongest voices for reparations from Europe for the genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement of African people, said the aim of the emancipation festival was to bring awareness to the region\u2019s period of struggle and resistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cCricket, a game brought to us \u2026 by the British colonists, became our own existential instrument to aid our quest for national liberation, liberty, equality, fairness and justice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe absorbed this English sport, mastered it, transcended its limits, made it our own, redefined it – and took it beyond the boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that today, \u201ccricketing culture\u201d remained vital to the region.<\/p>\n

But such is the state of Caribbean cricket that Caricom, the 15-country regional bloc, recently said that it was \u201cdeeply concerned \u2026 about all aspects of the current state of the game in the region\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Caricom said: \u201cCricket has, for decades, been a platform through which our small nations have collectively stood tall on the world stage. West Indies Cricket is very much a \u2018public good\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

A West Indies legends cricket stamp. Photograph: Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines<\/p>\n

It added that \u201cthe [West Indies] team\u2019s recent performance is a moment of reckoning for this cherished Caribbean institution\u201d.<\/p>\n

Describing cricket as a \u201cglue that has kept us together\u201d, Sir Clive Lloyd, who twice led the West Indies to world cup victory, welcomed the intervention by Caricom, saying: \u201cWe are not a very rich area and [it will be good] if they can inject cash and whatever it is that is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kesrick Williams, 35, a former cricketer from St Vincent, said some of today\u2019s players were becoming disillusioned and needed more support. He called for a change in the general culture of West Indies cricket to revive passion for the sport among children and young people. \u201cI can\u2019t tell when last I saw cricket being played in the road and the traffic had to stop. We have to build back that cricket culture and that firm love for the game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, what would put a smile on my dad\u2019s face was watching cricket. As a youngster when I saw that \u2026 I fell in love with cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n

James said Caricom was hoping to include the cricket heroes of the 70s \u2013 who were recently the subject of a set of a commemorative stamps in SVG \u2013 in discussions about the game:<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the legends are still around. And if we can take an ounce of passion that they have, and we move that from their generation to the next generation of Caribbean cricketers, it will make a whole heap of difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When they toured overseas in the 1970s, West Indies cricketers were sometimes subjected to barrages of racist abuse.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-75068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}