Bryan Davis, who writes for Catholic News, has refreshingly candid views on the game. His views dispel one's own that have become set as isms of truth through repeated reading in the major press. Since none spoke differently, some of these are accepted to be the way they are.
Bryan Davis is a former West Indian cricketer. His "Profile" at Cricinfo reads thus -
Bryan Davis was an opening batsman of tremendous ability who played four Tests against Australia in 1964-65. He opened in three of them, with his best performance coming in his first match, in front of his home crowd at Port-of-Spain, when he made 54 and 58, adding 116 and 91 for the first wicket with Conrad Hunte. Despite this, and 68 at Bridgetown, he wasn't picked again, although he did tour India in 1966-67 without playing in any of the Tests. He won selection for that trip largely thanks to him carrying his bat for 188 for North against South Trinidad. A useful legspinner, he played two seasons for Glamorgan in 1969 (when they won the Championship) and 1970, passing 1000 runs on both occasions.
CricinfoIt is easy to consider his views to be vinegared by his own experience, but often a view different from accepted conventions do sound that way. Or one looks for a reason to disbelieve and discredit...but truth is sometimes so blindingly obvious that we wonder why we did not see it in the first place. Not keeping history within reach is perhaps one reason....the other reason is too volatile to record here. (I've had my share of Molotov Cocktail throwers here)
This particular article by him is titled -
WI cricket fiction - Jan 25 While I was reading it, I couldn't help think how relevant every paragraph of the article is. Not only does it confirm that history repeats itself (albeit in different hands) but also corrects an existing parallax.
It is strongly believed, and propagated so even now, and also as an explanation of the present state, that West Indian cricket was shaped by players participating in the English County Cricket circuit. Perhaps a measure of such a view was also engendered by misinterpreting the influential Caribbean writer, CLR James' statement in his widely read book,
Beyond A Boundary, which goes something like this -
"West Indian cricket has arrived at maturity because of two factors: the rise in the financial position of the colored middle class and the high fees paid to players by the English leagues. Of this, the economic basis of West Indian cricket – big cricket, so to speak – I was constantly aware, and from early on."Clearly CLR speaks about the financial benefits of playing county cricket and how it helped retain local talent within the game rather than lose it to other trades and professions. But it has often been interpreted to mean that WI cricketers were custom built in ECC from a basic structure. This book was written about the time period Bryan Davis describes in his article - when county cricket opened out to West Indian cricket players.
Other writers from England and elsewhere have strengthened this view twhich Brayn Davis calls
WI Cricket Fiction right at the top of his article itself - in the title. And he touches upon currently hot topics with a historical perspective.
He begins his article in this manner -
Too many people, and most recently the CEO of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), believe that playing in the English County Cricket Championship is what made West Indian cricketers great. Isn’t it strange how we West Indians are so insecure that we don’t appreciate our own and are quick to accept whatever foreign reporters write about our demise as a cricketing nation?
I can state unequivocally that this is a myth, a piece of cricketing fiction dumped on us as one of the reasons for our not doing well for the past ten years. It has taken root to the extent that the CEO of the WICB thinks that starting a Pro League in the West Indies will bring back our former glory. -
Bryan Davis in
Catholic News He goes on to elaborate how and why -
In 1968, the year the gates of County Cricket were opened to West Indians and other overseas players, the West Indies team was considered World champions of cricket after defeating Australia for the first time when they met in the Caribbean in 1965.
Our cricketers were in great demand and the Englishmen changed all the rules of their First Class competition to accommodate the popular West Indian cricketer.
In a further subsection called
Immediate heroes, Bryan fleshes out his above statement.
He also in the process describes how test cricket was losing its steam even back then! So much for those who weave figments from their lands of fantasy. Let's hear him describe -
Immediate heroes
The tide of change in our cricket fortunes coincided with the captaincy of Sir Frank Worrell in 1960/61 when West Indies toured Australia under his leadership. Test cricket at the time was becoming unpopular “Down Under” because of the dreariness of their traditional opponents England, who the year before had crawled to such an extent in their batting that everyone was yelling for bright cricket, a phrase that became the rallying cry of the various cricketing Boards, bar India, at the time.
The Ashes, now again touted as capable of sustaining test cricket by spinmeisters, was actually in grave danger Down Under back then! Test cricket was in danger. Ennui at certain methods had killed the game. "Bright cricket" was the battle cry....except for the subservient Indian board, who often were more English than the English board till Comrade Modi happened to it. Even now it follows an old beaten path.
So test cricket needed some "joy" so to speak even back then to sustain it. West Indans provided it back then with their flair...later ODIs with their colour and now T20 is. Those in denial should wake up and accept the fact that test cricket is a niche product which needs plenty help from all sides to stay afloat. Some "joy" has to be invented into it or created elsewhere (in the case of LOIs and T20) and borrowed from there.
Recently,
Dave Richardson and
Adam Gilchrist spoke of making test cricket more exciting along the lines dicussed all around the world and what we also had discussed here before as well.
Let's read on...without interruptions from me!
The England/Australia Ashes series had become a mere battle of attrition, both sides so not wanting to lose that they both started a Test match with the sole purpose of doing all in their power to prevent it, which meant that batsmen did everything they could not to get out, at the expense of scoring runs – the result of which was very slow batting and extremely dull cricket.
Frank Worrell and his band of youngsters, under the influence of manager Gerry Gomez, an aggressive and attractive cricketer in his day, went out on that tour promising bright cricket to the Australians and became such idols that, at the completion of the Test series, a crowd of more than 100,000 lined the streets of Melbourne to say farewell to a cricket team that had given them great pleasure; it was their way of expressing thanks, as our boys drove through these throngs in open-top convertible cars.
I can't help it...I have to butt in...cricket with flair, colour and aggression was always popular. Even among the test cricket watchers of 1960s. Those who ask us to romance with plain dullness suggest that there is an underlying strategy too subtle to percieve beneath the apparent placidity. While one agrees with that to a degree, too often it is merely an excuse for insipid play, tactics, lack of strategy or ability. Cricket which isn't that corpselike, they suggest...insinuate...even in test cricket...is devoid of such a brain beneath its lively flying skirts of enterprising play.
How distant can they from reality - Australia too played such a brand of cricket through two decades till recently and won everything under the sun till they encountered a new Indian team.
Perhaps cricket is another word for phlegmatism. Perhaps quick wit and like strategies and tactics are too nimble for some to keep up with.
But the fact remains...test cricket has been on support systems for long now. It needs to do something of its own as well now to avoid going down the drain of empty stadia and absent television viewrs. The day cannot be far when television channels wouldn't like to clog up their bandwith and prime time with desultoriness and mediocrity. No...such things cannot be gift wrapped by calling them heritage or some such thing.
Continuing our analysis...
After this tour, which saw the coming to the fore of Sir Garfield Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Lance Gibbs, Wes Hall and others, West Indian cricketers became immediate heroes to all the cricketing world and because of this the rules began changing.
Firstly, the Australian states invited these popular cricketers to come back to their shores and play for them – Sobers to South Australia, Kanhai to Western Australia and Hall to Queensland. All these players helped influence a new generation of Australian cricketers.
Following this famous tour, the West Indians then went to England in 1963 to play in a five-Test series. The word had spread of their exploits and the English wanted some of the action but were well beaten. After this sound thrashing, England decided to change their entire system of invitations to visiting teams so that the West Indies could return in 1966.
Surely there wasn't any FTP (Future Tours Programme) back then! And, surely ICC wasn't a more democratic body with enough voices to question?
England could continue to dictate in what till a year ago was known as the Imperial Cricket Conference. The Imperial Council was only renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965. So even if it was renamed, it continued to function as it used to mostly.
Tours could be scrapped and shunted around as per convenience of one member of ICC.
Otherwise, the next date for a Caribbean tour would not have been until 1971, and they just could not allow these attractive and crowd-pulling West Indians to get away. The marketing men at the time saw the turnstiles clicking away with fans falling over themselves to witness the cavalier batting, the fury of the pace bowling and the guile of the spin bowling of the WI team.
I hope never again do people say money was never an issue in cricket.
I hope people never say money in cricket is only an issue brought in by BCCI.
This is not me talking...it is an independent writer...a West Indian...and a former cricketer with no stakes left in the matter speaking.
It was after all the subtlety of spin offered by Sonny Ramadhin and Alfie Valentine that had brought these WI cricketers to maturity by whipping England in England for the first time, in 1950.
But the English County Board was also concerned about the lack of excitement and fun in their County game and wisely lifted their rules to bring in overseas players, the intention being to flood the county grounds with these bright and colourful cricketers of the Caribbean. The impact was complete.
I hope I never again hear complaints and criticism of BCCI/IPL bringing in effects.
The thing is the board with unmatched power of that time did what suited its interests without even a semblance of democracy or collective thought. At least BCCI works with other boards.
But we stray from West Indian cricket which is the crux of the article -
Before 1968, an overseas cricketer who represented a county did so only by virtue of residential qualification. This meant that they could no longer play for their own country in Test cricket or their state or territory in First Class cricket. One was therefore lost to international cricket. It also took three years to qualify by residence.
Some cricketers took the plunge and lost their cricketing inheritance, like Roy Marshall of Barbados who had already played for the West Indies and left to represent Hampshire and Donald Ramsamooj, the Trinidadian who qualified for Northamptonshire, having previously played for Trinidad, and gave up any opportunity to play Test or any cricket for his island again.
These were the rules that were changed in 1968 to accommodate overseas cricketers and 13 of the 17 counties opted for West Indians, some of them employing more than one. The new regulations noted that one player could be employed under special and immediate registration but the other must qualify through having been a resident for a year.
This was the background against which Caribbean men joined the County Cricket circuit: it was to fulfil a need to help lift English cricket out of the doldrums and for no other reason.
Sobers was the big prize and the county of Nottingham won the right to have him. Many West Indians took the opportunity to play constant First Class cricket which, of course, would have helped some to become better players because of the sheer regularity of play.
There was nowhere else like it; but the point is that the West Indian cricketer was already developed and in demand in England when he landed this position in the English cricket fraternity.
County cricket did not make the West Indian; the West Indian, in fact, saved English County Cricket from boredom and lack of excitement.
The reason for the undefeated success between 1980 and 1995 was not because of Caribbean cricketers playing County cricket but had more to do with the three years of Kerry Packer cricket between 1977 and 1980. But that – the rise, and the fall after 1995 – is for another article
Bent and broken rules for a purpose of the self - well, someone benefitted from this change in rules and continue to do so. Kolpak is an evolution of what is going on. At least now cricketers can play for their countries unless through the Kolpak scheme.
And then there is that thing about counties vying for a star to lift their forunes or further increase them....all this sounds so contemporary!
So West Indies cricket wasn't built through in the English factories of county cricket. Pretty obvious, one might say, for there is a distinct difference between the methods at play. You will agree cloudy grey is different from all other colours on the field.
There are many
more interesting articles from Bryan Davis. Do check them out if you are interested in good cricket reading.
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