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Hansib Publications - Frank Birbalsingh

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157 pages

English

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Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity provides a voice for cricketers whose music is drowned out by the sound and fury of the likes of Brian Lara, Viv Richards and Garry Sobers. But as this book proves, Indian-Caribbean cricketers have their music too. From Sonny Ramadhin in 1950 to Ramnaresh Sarwan in 2012, this book chronicles the dramatic, often turbulent, odyssey of all 33 Indian-Caribbean Test players within the realistic, multicultural context of their living social, cultural and political history.

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Publié par	Hansib Publications
Date de parution	01 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781910553329
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0390€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity
Frank Birbalsingh
First published in 2014
by Hansib Publications Limited
P.O. Box 226, Hertford, Hertfordshire,
SG14 3WY, United Kingdom
info@hansibpublications.com
www.hansibpublications.com
Copyright Frank Birbalsingh, 2014
ISBN 978-1-906190-74-3 eISBN 978-1-910553-32-9 Kindle 978-1-910553-33-6
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in Great Britain
For Kai
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Rosanne Kanhai, Clem Seecharan and Cecil Gray for permission to quote from their publications and, since it is impossible to recall all those with whom I discussed cricket over the years, I mention only more recent names here: Keith Sandiford, Baldwin Mootoo, Kissoon Lall, Ronald Reid, Moti Makund, Harry Ramkhelawan, Stanley Algoo. Thanks also for computer services from Christine Birbalsingh and Kevin Freeman, and for statistics from Ray Goble. Final thanks to Arif Ali, Kash Ali and Hansib Publications for unstinting support.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
Sonny Ramadhin: Investing West Indians with power
CHAPTER TWO
Rohan Kanhai: A new dimension in batting
CHAPTER THREE
Joe Solomon: What immortal hand or eye?
CHAPTER FOUR
Alvin Kallicharran: The curse of apartheid
CHAPTER FIVE
1957-1994: Spin bowlers - lepers in West Indian cricket
CHAPTER SIX
1994-2013: There is no West Indian anthem
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shivnarine Chanderpaul: He kills with a thousand scratches
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ramnaresh Sarwan: A simple sport can unite West Indians
APPENDICES
WORKS CITED
TEST CAREER STATISTICS
1ST CLASS CAREER STATISTICS
INDEX
PREFACE
Powerful empires generally conquer weaker nations and colonise them, leaving an imprint of their imperial language and culture behind. In former British colonies like Nigeria or India, for example, the British ruled for a period then withdrew; and in Australia or New Zealand, the British again ruled before withdrawing, this time leaving behind their own settlers whose descendants today form the main population. In the Anglophone Caribbean, the region was first de-populated of its Amerindian indigenes by British and other European conquerors, and then re-populated through enforcement mainly by Africans, and also by Indians and smaller groups such as Chinese, Madeirans and others.
The process of imprinting British culture on essentially foreign groups in the Caribbean was profoundly different from that in Nigeria or India where British manners were imprinted, despite resistance, on large and ancient cultures. It was also different from the practice in former colonies like Australia or New Zealand where dominant British customs, including language and culture, were transferred wholesale by large numbers of British settlers. In the Caribbean, there was no ancient culture to resist imprinting because the indigenes were removed or eliminated. Nor were there large numbers of British settlers since Caribbean plantation culture required merely temporary officials, managers, merchants or other businessmen. The struggle for survival of a variety of powerless, imported cultures, without an indigenous base, in a new land is what produces Anglophone Caribbean problems of cultural discontinuity, divisiveness and doubtful nationality.
Whether there is a hidden connection between a society s local conditions and its quality of art or sport may not be entirely clear; but these two, Caribbean language/literature and its sport of cricket, form the main planks of social unity or shared sense of nationality connecting Anglophone Caribbean territories. The thesis in Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity is exactly this: that cricket, if not the strongest link, is as strong as Caribbean or Creole-English language/ literature in fostering connections between Anglophone Caribbean territories.
Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity considers the effectiveness of cricket both in fostering connections, as well as overcoming or reducing problems of discontinuity and divisiveness in the Anglophone Caribbean. For example, Cecil Gray affirms that, in bowling a red-coloured cricket ball, Sonny Ramadhin delivered, an orb investing us West Indians with power . In other words, by helping to achieve West Indian success over other nations in cricket, Ramadhin exhibits the working of a collective West Indian will or nationality. In one instance, according to Gray, West Indians listening to radio commentary on Test matches occurring oceans away, in Australia, could not hold back tears of sorrow when they heard, bleary-eyed, early on Christmas morning, in 1952, that Ramadhin was denied the wicket that would have brought their team victory against Australia.
Consider also another instance in Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity , more than fifty years later, when Indian-Guyanese batsman, Shivnarine Chanderpaul is knocked unconscious by a bouncer from the Australian fast bowler, Brett Lee in a Test match in Jamaica in May 2008. Chanderpaul picks himself up and after a cursory, on-the-spot medical examination, continues batting as if nothing had happened. Why does the largely Jamaican crowd, neither Indian nor Guyanese, leap exultantly to their feet, openly shedding shameless tears of joy and solidarity when, shortly afterwards, he reaches his century?
Since Indian-Caribbean Test cricketers are, by definition, members of the West Indies team, it goes without saying that Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity tells us as much about Indians who play for the West Indies team, as about West Indies Test cricket. While two of eight chapters in the volume - Chapters Five and Six - offer brief career summaries of every Indian cricketer who has represented West Indies, the bulk of Indian-Caribbean Test Cricketers and the Quest for Identity consists of a lengthy historical Introduction, and six chronologically arranged, chapter-length analyses of the Test career of each of the main Indian-Caribbean players - Sonny Ramadhin, Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran, Joe Solomon, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan. That among these six most successful Indian-Caribbean Test cricketers Ramadhin is the only Trinidadian illustrates an anomaly typical of a new, frontier-like society, without settled conventions, where currents of untested individualism and improvisation combine to produce top Test cricketers in a ratio of five Indian-Guyanese to one Indian-Trinidadian. It is equally anomalous that Indian-Trinidadian writers in the 1950s proved more internationally successful than Indian-Guyanese writers in almost exactly the same ratio.
INTRODUCTION
In May 2012, in their Third Test against England at Edgbaston, for the first time in their history, West Indies picked a cricket team that included a majority of Indian-Caribbean players, six in all: Adrian Barath, Assad Fudadin, Narsingh Deonarine, Denesh Ramdin, Sunil Narine and Ravi Rampaul. West Indies first entered lists of Test cricket, against England, in June 1928, when their team consisted entirely of (White) Europeans, (Black) Africans, and ( brown ) mixed blood Euro/Africans. Appendix 6 The first Indian member of the team, Sonny Ramadhin, was not selected until 1950. In 1957, Ramadhin was joined by Rohan Kanhai in the First Test against England at Edgbaston, then in the Second Test at Lord s by Kanhai and Nyron Asgarali. In the 1960s, after White West Indian players had virtually disappeared, and the team had settled down to a predominantly Black membership, one, two or three Indian-Caribbeans - rarely four and twice five - appeared up to 1982. But during a long period from February 1982 to March 1994, no Indian-Caribbean player was included in the West Indies team. That is why inclusion of six Indian-Caribbean players in May 2012 is such a redletter event.
The inconsistent presence of Indian-Caribbean cricketers is a legacy of Caribbean history, society and culture, conceived out of the iniquity of slavery and indenture, and dedicated to the proposition of profit. The legacy breeds submerged feelings of victimisation, insularity, and suspicion of class or ethnic bias in everyday West Indian life and cricket. Issues of ethnicity, for instance, in every nook and cranny of West Indian experience, derive directly out of European settlement of the region, and a mixed racial profile that evolved soon after voyages by Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century. By the nineteenth century the whole region was divided into colonies controlled chiefly by Spain, Britain, France, Holland and Portugal, with Britain establishing English-speaking colonial administrations in many islands, including Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad (today Trinidad and Tobago), and two mainland territories - British Guiana (today Guyana) and British Honduras (today Belize).
In the beginning, during the sixteenth or seventeenth century, English-speaking colonial populations consisted mainly of European conquerors and indigenous Amerindians, but this changed after the indigenes were either eliminated or forced to take refuge in impenetrable forests, and millions of African slaves brought, in the next two or three centuries, to work on British plantations. This largescale infusion of Africans into British colonies transformed the population ratio, turning Africans into the largest ethnic group in most British Caribbean colonies, followed by (White) British rulers and mixed Euro/Africans, or brown peopl