I have to say that, despite the informative prefix of “A Note on Cricket” following Robert Lipsyte’s excellent introduction to this American edition of C.L.R. James’s autobiography in which “[he has] made great claims for cricket. As firmly as [he is] able and as is here possible, [he has] integrated it in the historical movement of the times”, my readers will need an interest in the game and how it is played. The above-mentioned note explains all you need to know, but you have to know you want to, and will probably constantly need to refer back to it.
The story begins in the early years of the 20th century when James as a six year old could watch cricket in his native Trinidad from a chair in his garden, and when the eight year old was already steeped in English literature. He tells us that his home island and the rest of the West Indies had absorbed the culture of the British imperialists, which included the game and the principles under which it was played.
Thus cricketers were gentlemen of honour who, if non-white, would have one status in the game and another in normal life, depending heavily on their shade of black. Membership of each of the clubs on the island were confined to those of their particular skin colour. For most of the period covered, the captain of the international team had to be white, usually leading far better players.
James, himself, became a skilled first class cricketer who soon travelled to England and in addition to his prowess in the league game grew as a reporting journalist and developed an interest in the politics of the times, especially concerning racism and emancipation, eventually becoming an important voice in West Indian independence.
In his introduction Lipsyte States that “C.L.R. James gets to the root of the exhilarating liberation from class and race and future that exists during the transcendent moments of play; but he never forgets that this liberation exists only within the boundaries of the game, and then only for the gamers.
“Lurking beyond the boundaries of every game are the controlling interests, the forces of oppression: the economics of the owners, the politics of the government, even the passions of the fans.”
The importance of education was paramount in his family and determined status in the island. Our author was as good at it as he was at cricket. Dickens, Wordsworth, and Arnold were just a few of the writers who had meaning for him.
Fifteen years in America meant that, although he was introduced to other sports, James was not involved in cricket. He applied his thinking beyond the boundaries of the game which he used as a basis on which to apply to all sport. He held that “when the common people were not at work, the one thing they wanted was organised sports and games…. Organised games had been part and parcel of the civilization of Ancient Greece. With the decline of that civilisation they disappeared from Europe for some 1,500 years. People ran and jumped and kicked balls about and competed with one another; they went to see the knights jousting. But games and sports, organised as the Greeks had organised them, there were none.”
The ruling class in England, [by the Victorian era] disciplined and trained itself [by its privileged education in places such as Eton] trained itself for the more subtle and effective exercise of power…..The world-wide renaissance of organised games and sports as an integral part of modern civilization was on its way.”
This book was originally published in 1963, this edition in 1983. The detail of players and their performances are therefore history to today’s reader. There are fewer and fewer of us, like me, who dashed home from school in July 1956 to hear on the radio Jim Laker taking the last of his 19 wickets in an Ashes Test Match. Even for me, familiar as are the great names of the past, most of the detail painstakingly reported in this book, is previously unknown and frankly leaves me skipping some of the numbers.
For me, the beautiful game is cricket, not soccer. This is why I enjoy James’s chapter “What is Art?”, from which I will now quote extensively. “Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.
“In a superficial sense all games are dramatic. Two men boxing or running a race can exhibit skill, courage, endurance and sharp changes of fortune, can evoke hope and fear. They can even harrow the soul with laughter and tears, pity and terror. The state of the city, the nation or the world can invest a sporting event with dramatic intensity such as is reached in few theatres. When the democrat Joe Louis fought the Nazi Schmelling the bout became the focus of approaching word conflict…..
“These possibilities cricket shares with other games in a greater or lesser degree. Its quality as drama is more specific. It is so organised that at all times it is compelled to reproduce the central action …… two individuals are pitted against each other in a conflict that is strictly personal but no less strictly representative of a social group. One individual faces one individual bowler. But each represents the side. The personal achievement may be of the utmost competence or brilliance. Its ultimate value is whether it assists the side to victory or staves off defeat.
“The total spectacle consists and must consist of a series of individual, isolated episodes, each in itself completely self-contained. Each has its beginning, the ball bowled; its middle, the stroke played; its end, runs, no runs, dismissal. Within the fluctuating interest of the rise or fall of the game as a whole, there is the unending series of events, each single one fraught with immense possibilities of expectations and realizations.”
About five years ago we bought this iron gate beside Jackie from the Efford Recycling Centre and have waited to give it a purpose. Now it supports one side of the Gardener’s Rest which she finished refurbishing today.
This evening’s dinner consisted of meaty beef burgers, mashed potato, Brussels sprouts, and carrots followed by strawberries and evaporated milk or ice cream with which I drank Reserva Privada Chilean Merlot 2024 and Jackie finished the rosé.
After this I watched the highlights of the first day of the second men’s Test match between England and New Zealand.
