Sports psychologist and medical doctor Rudi Webster, who has written often on West Indies cricket, gave a very detailed speech on that subject at a recent sport seminar in Barbados where he outlined some qualities missing from our recent teams. He pointed out: “Frank Worrell was one of our best cricket leaders. What he achieved in Australia in 1960/61 with his young team was truly remarkable. Few on his team had any kind of reputation before they arrived in Australia, but when they left they were all superstars.
The team was a happy unit, team spirit was high, team unity was strong, and the team played with purpose and confidence. Under Worrell’s leadership the team became a cheerful, disciplined and tightly knit unit with powerful self-belief and a strong will to win.”
In light of our recent poor performances, and following Rudi’s comment about Worrell’s achievement in Australia, one has to wonder: How did Worrell take a team where “few had any kind of reputation” and get them to where “team spirit was high and the team played with purpose and confidence…with a strong will to win”? One plausible answer is that our previous history was at play.
All of the players had come out of their diverse colonial experiences with something to prove. Like the Caribbean people generally they had one thing in common: they wanted to show the world that we were indeed “a people of substance” (to use a favourite Rex Nettleford term). The dedication to hard work and discipline, introduced by one captain, Worrell, and continued by another, Clive Lloyd, was taken up by the players because, as individuals, they had a common motivation; they had something to prove; it was an issue at that time.
For most of us, growing up in the pre-independence Caribbean, at least for the “us” I knew, there was that drive to make it.
It was not something we talked about volubly, but I know that for most us, at least for the “us” I knew, there was a silent mission there to prove ourselves equal and not to continue to accept that the second-rate rung ascribed to us was our rightful place. I would look back years later in Canada, caught up in my own struggle to prove myself better, and remember people like Stanley Greaves and Leslie Cummings and Stanley Gonsalves, in my class at Saints, who were showing even at that young age the mettle within them that was behind the successes that later came their way.
Caribbean people had grown up in societies where many of the foreign professionals who taught us in schools, or were leading major businesses here, inculcated in us (perhaps not maliciously) the information that we were second-rate; even our own people had bought into that and would repeat it as gospel. Everything “foreign made” was better; even foreign attitudes were seen as superior. It comes back to me like yesterday, working at B.G.
Airways in the 1950s, and talking to a policeman at Good Hope in the Rupununi about some land development dispute that was causing problems, and he said to me. “Well, you know how the Englishman stay with their land.” I wanted to say, “Their land? What are you talking about? It’s our land.“ I didn’t say it, I was a youngster just out of school and didn’t have enough confidence yet to be combative, but the thought went through me like a knife.
Certainly other factors were at play behind our early successes, particularly the involvement of West Indian cricketers in English country cricket where they put in the hours and hours of learning the game under the varying English conditions and diverse teams, but in those early winning years our players also clearly had much more resolve.
In a recent BBC interview, former West Indies cricketer, Jeffrey Dujon, spoke about that fighting spirit citing Malcolm Marshall, with a broken hand, coming out to bat and winning the game, or Dujon himself continuing to keep wicket in a match with a broken finger. “The trainer just strapped it up to the next finger and that was it,” said Jeffrey.
Like the Caribbean people generally those players had one thing in common: emerging from colonialism, they wanted to show the former rulers, in particular, and the world in general, that we could compete level with anyone. In a time when parallel struggles were raging in the US civil rights arena, there were people all over the region similarly straining against the constraints, looking to prove ourselves.
Many of us came from those colonial life experiences determined to make our mark. That attitude was definitely in play with the teams under Worrell and then Clive Lloyd (Michael Holding is strong on this point) and one could see it in the celebrations that erupted among Caribbean people when the wins started to accumulate. Motivation was high. I distinctly remember encountering Charlie Griffith when some of the West Indies team, fresh from beating England, visited the nightclub in Toronto where Tradewinds were playing. Charlie could barely contain himself in his exhilaration.
Under Worrell and Lloyd, when that harsh training regimen came in (Michael Holding has talked about in his books) every game was an occasion to show our ability; we had something to prove, for ourselves and, thereby, our people.
Some of the players today may have that natural ability, but they don’t have anything to prove anymore. Caribbean people now live in varied independence; we have proved ourselves in all the professions; we have reached the top rung in literature and music; we have international track stars and pop singers. We have shown the world our capabilities.
The back side of that, however, is that, as a group, we no longer have that fire in our belly pushing us, so as cricketers we skip the training, or we amble through the single (like Gayle), or we don’t put in the 10,000 hours learning the sport as Rudi Webster says (Malcolm Marshall warned about that in his later years). Consequently our standard has fallen and stays low. With colonialism gone, it means that that kind of “move, lemme show unna” motivation is gone, too, and along with it that fierce resolve that drove us in the winning years.
