There is a say­ing that crick­et is the glue that holds the Caribbean re­gion to­geth­er. Well, it is al­so be­ing used in Eng­land to push the Trinidad Car­ni­val agen­da.

Trinida­di­ans Rhon­da Al­leyne and Nicole Vil­laroel are part of that dri­ve and were present last the week­end at the Caribbean Crick­et Club in Leeds for the Win­drush Fes­ti­val, where they con­tin­ued to push Trinidad Car­ni­val.

The fes­ti­val was con­cep­tu­alised in 2017 and ho­n­ours the lega­cy of the Win­drush Gen­er­a­tion in the Unit­ed King­dom an­nu­al­ly.

Af­ter World War II, many African-Caribbean peo­ple were en­cour­aged by the British gov­ern­ment to mi­grate to the UK to fill short­ages in the labour mar­ket cre­at­ed by the war. The Em­pire Win­drush brought the first group who em­i­grat­ed from the Caribbean to the Unit­ed King­dom in 1948.

The British gov­ern­ment in­censed the en­tire Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty last year when it threat­ened to de­port the chil­dren of mem­bers of the Win­drush Gen­er­a­tion who had been liv­ing in the UK for decades.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia about their pres­ence at the fes­ti­val, Al­leyne said: "We are here as mem­bers of the Caribbean Crick­et Club but we re­alise that in or­der to make our pres­ence felt here in terms of in­fus­ing the car­ni­val, we need to use the at­trac­tion of crick­et as the ve­hi­cle.

"We are from Sheffield but we are here in Leeds where the Caribbean Crick­et Club is lo­cat­ed. We want to have that car­ni­val pres­ence up here. There is car­ni­val but then there is so much that has to be done to make it bet­ter."

Vil­laroel chimed in: "This Win­drush Fes­ti­val cel­e­brates West In­di­an spir­it. We as a peo­ple from the Caribbean made a dif­fer­ence in the minds of the British peo­ple. And by hav­ing func­tions like these, we re­mind our­selves that we have an in­flu­ence in the cul­ture of Britain.

"Eng­land, in some small way, is still the moth­er coun­try and there is British in­flu­ence in the Caribbean. We want to en­sure that there is still a Caribbean in­flu­ence in Britain and car­ni­val is one of the ways that we are en­sur­ing it re­mains."

How­ev­er, Al­leyne said as much as they push the car­ni­val in Eng­land, noth­ing will ever com­pare to the car­ni­val in Trinidad.

"You can't com­pare any­thing with the mec­ca, which is car­ni­val back home in Trinidad. We try here and we will con­tin­ue to feed off that, as we use crick­et and car­ni­val to keep our pres­ence here rel­e­vant."