Tag Archives: CLR James

“Often the bridesmaid,” a television commentator summed up England’s performance in the 11 World Cups so far contested, “never the bride.” The comment put a broad smile on my lips. And immediately afterwards, a disturbing thought in my mind. It wiped the smile completely off. Although the evidence, in my …

“A man of genius,” CLR James says, in writing of Garry Sobers, “is what he is, he cannot be something else and remain what he is.” There is another West Indian left-hander, born a generation after Sobers on May 2, 1969, to whom James’ encomium applies unadjusted. Superlatives abound in …

Despite my shameless semi-appropriation of Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots,” this in no way suggests that I place myself close to the same league of this giant ancestor. This is just my paltry message to those in my country, particularly those who live where there isn’t much grass, far …

“Haiti is the only member of CARICOM whose citizens require a visa to travel to any other CARICOM nation. In other words, although CARICOM leaders pay lip service to Haiti, they also know that Haitians might leave their failed state—which is the diplomatic way of calling a country a ‘shithole’—and settle …

“[Kevin] Baldeosingh […] uncritically regurgitates the defunct racist hypothesis that ‘darker-skinned people’ are judged less intelligent and ‘more primitive’ than ‘fairer-skinned people’. “[…] During the first century of this era, Ethiopians were the majority in the town of Barygasa (now Baruch) in western India. By the time of the Mughal …

Those who have read CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary will be all too familiar with Matthew Bondman. James describes Bondman on the second page so that the name is likely to have been encountered even by those who did not get very far into the famous book. The Bondman description reads in part …

“It is bad captaincy that is causing us to be scrambled, everybody is whispering and shrugging shoulders. ... In this campaign I shall spare nobody… I hereby give notice; I shall not let this question rest until it is corrected… This fooling with the West Indies captaincy has gone on too …

It brought Garry Sobers to the verge of public tears in Sri Lanka in 2015. Wherever Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh and Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards are in the world, it is almost certain to bring them to private tears. And it will make cricketing knights Frank Worrell and …

Trinidad and Tobago’s performance at the Olympics should be analysed with a level head, acknowledgement of non-existent national sporting systems and within the context of its Olympic history. The two island nation attended its first Olympics in 1948 and, between then and 1952, won three medals. Rodney “The Mighty Midget” …

Columnist Earl Best surveys the many tributes to dearly departed cricket icon Tony Cozier and seeks to make a river of the tributaries: “Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” (African proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe) In a 21st Century colonised by the …

I must give credit to my colleague Earl Best for the title of this piece given that, on this rare occasion, he was faster out of the blocks than I was. The news late last night was that Housing Minister Marlene McDonald had been fired. Don’t pop that champagne just …

When in 1963 CLR James completed his seminal work on cricket, the title of which I have borrowed for this column, his introduction posed a simple question to readers. ‘‘What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?’’ James was of the mind that, in order to fully understand …