Nicholas Clarke

For­mer Eng­land cap­tain, Mike Brear­ley be­lieves that for­mer West In­dies cap­tain Sir Frank Wor­rell and the late T&T in­tel­lec­tu­al CLR James de­serve a place in his­to­ry, along­side Caribbean No­bel Lau­re­ates like econ­o­mist Arthur Lewis and writ­ers VS Naipaul and Derek Wal­cott. Brear­ley was speak­ing dur­ing the Sir Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee's 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the leg­endary bats­man's ap­point­ment as West In­dies cap­tain at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day night. Wor­rell broke the colour bar­ri­er to be­come the first black man to ever lead the re­gion­al team for an en­tire Test se­ries dur­ing its tour of Aus­tralia in 1960/61. Al­though the rub­ber was lost 2-1, the West In­dies were hailed by the host coun­try for their spir­it­ed ap­proach to the game.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress, Brear­ley took an in-depth look in­to the his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in world crick­et, high­light­ing the con­di­tions against which Wor­rell was pit­ted through­out his ca­reer. "The British had many terms of abuse for dis­par­age­ment of mem­bers of sub­ject races or cul­tures. Mil­i­tary and ad­min­is­tra­tive pow­er was pred­i­cat­ed on as­sump­tions of cul­tur­al su­pe­ri­or­i­ty," he said. "Such at­ti­tudes al­lowed white peo­ple to rep­re­sent black crick­eters as all spon­tane­ity and ex­u­ber­ance but lack­ing in res­o­lu­tion and so­lid­i­ty, tech­nique and dis­ci­pline. They were said to fall apart in pan­ic more quick­ly than we whites did. "They were viewed as chil­dren in com­par­i­son with us the el­der. This meant that for many years it was out of the ques­tion for a black man to cap­tain the na­tion­al team, for chil­dren can­not be adults and chil­dren need ma­ture parental lead­ers.

"How much in­tegri­ty, ma­tu­ri­ty and con­fi­dence would have been need­ed to suc­ceed in such an un­just world? The achieve­ment was to avoid the vi­o­lence or stu­pid­i­ty that could have set back the cause of the very fair play so ad­mired on the crick­et field it­self. What hap­pened with­in the bound­ary would pro­found­ly shake what hap­pened be­yond the bound­ary." Brear­ley al­so high­light­ed Wor­rell's re­la­tion­ship with James, who led an im­pas­sioned pub­lic cam­paign for the Ba­jan's ap­point­ment as cap­tain. "Wor­rell not on­ly had won­der­ful skill as a crick­eter. He had a great crick­et­ing brain. In James's words, Wor­rell was 'one of the few who af­ter a few hours of talk had left me as tired as if I'd been put through a ringer. His re­spons­es to dif­fi­cult ques­tions were so un­hesi­tat­ing and so pre­cise that I felt that it was I who was un­der­go­ing ex­am­i­na­tion." Brear­ley end­ed his speech by read­ing James's con­clud­ing note of the fate­ful tour down un­der.

"We've gone far be­yond the game. Frank Wor­rell was proud to be ho­n­oured. I saw all the West In­di­an ease, hu­mour and easy adap­ta­tion to en­vi­ron­ment. I could see his pre­cise and un­com­pro­mis­ing eval­u­a­tions; those it seems are now sec­ond na­ture. Clear­ing their way with bat and ball, West In­di­ans at that mo­ment had made a pub­lic en­try in­to the comi­ty of na­tions." Wor­rell led the team un­til his re­tire­ment in 1963, fin­ish­ing with a record of nine wins, three loss­es, two draws and one tie in 15 Tests. He was knight­ed the fol­low­ing year. Be­fore his pre­ma­ture death in 1967 at the age of 42, he en­tered the Ja­maican Sen­ate where he strong­ly sup­port­ed a clos­er po­lit­i­cal union be­tween the na­tions of the Caribbean. Among the event's oth­er guest speak­ers were crick­et writer Vaneisa Baksh and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs' Sta­cy Roop­nar­ine.?Those in at­ten­dance in­clud­ed for­mer West In­dies play­ers Gor­don Greenidge, Deryck Mur­ray and Rangy Nanan and First Vice Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board Dud­nath Ramkessoon.