tfraser@tstt.net.tt

Injustice of colonial cricket

• Colonial injustice restricts Andy Ganteaume to one Test for WI.
• Andy responds to contention of having cost WI a victory.
• Even media used to carry out injustice.

‘I do not want to be liberated from them’—memories from the colonial past of injustice. ‘I would consider liberation from them a grievous loss, irreparable... I do not want to be liberated from the past, and above all I do not wish to be liberated from its future. Not me.’

—CLR James, Beyond a Boundary, 1963

Like James, Andy Ganteaume does not want his mind to be freed from the injustice suffered under white colonial rule—the genteel soul that he remains refers to it softly and euphemistically as the “establishment.”

However, Andy must feel a sense of relief, having gone some distance to freeing himself of carrying this imposed historical burden of being personally responsible for not playing another Test innings after making 112 in his first turn at the crease.

It was the second Test of the 1948 series against England and was played here at the Queen’s Park Oval, and instead of the innings leading to many more opportunities to play at the highest level, it was the last time that Andy Ganteaume got selected on a West Indies Test team.

Andy notes that the captain of the WI team in the Test, Gerry Gomez, claimed that if he had scored “60 at a faster rate, it would have served me better in the future.”

Andy’s recounting of the manner in which the establishment of the day sought to rationalise in subtle and often very blatant ways its domination and the discrimination against blacks and people of colour gives an insight into the colonial society of the period.

In addition to identifying colonial injustice for his fate, Andy responds to the contention of having cost WI a victory because of his allegedly “slow scoring.”

Beyond setting out clearly the circumstances of the WI innings, the game, his innings and that of his partner at the other end, Frank Worrell—described by Neville Cardus as “the greatest stroke-player of the moment”—Cricket all the Year, 1952—Ganteaume’s My Story gives penetrating insight into the structural nature of colonial injustice and how it worked against blacks and people from the lower social and economic strata of society.

Planter class autarchy did not only prevail in the wider society, it ruled at the level of the territorial boards and ultimately at the West Indies Cricket Board of Control.

For instance, to ensure that England would get the best press in the West Indies, even if that meant undermining the West Indian cause and emerging self-confidence, Norman Preston, a former English county cricketer turned reporter on cricket, replaced that giant Trinidad and West Indian cricket chronicler, Brunell Jones, as reporter on the games for the Trinidad Guardian of the time.

“Ganteaume was slow and boring. Eventually he completed his century avoiding Howarth’s packed off-side field, pushed a single to leg,” reported Preston (the italics are Ganteaume’s), designed to demonstrate how Preston failed to factor into his commentary England’s defensive measures in the field.

But while so denigrating Andy’s innings, the British writer, obviously sent here to do a job for the “mother country,” described England’s Jack Robertson’s 133 in five and three quarter hours as being “solid as a rock.”

Further, Preston, whose job was to win the war of the mind, considered that Billy Griffith in his 141 “defied the West Indies bowling for six minutes short of six hours.”

And in keeping with the colonial times and our unquestioning acceptance of the view of ourselves from on high and abroad, Andy’s story notes that “none of the local writers expressed a view varying from Preston’s, although they had seen me bat since 1941…never noting that I was an unduly slow scorer. But if they dared disagree with the Englishman it is not inconceivable that their jobs would have been jeopardised.”

My own assessment of Andy’s knock has been put into perspective with the comparison made in the book with the 118 made by Tom Graveney. The Englishman, a wonderfully languid stroke-maker, took four and a quarter hours, just 15 minutes shorter than Andy, to get to his score in the 1967/68 series at the same Queen’s Park Oval.

Moreover, that Graveney scored a mere two boundaries more than Ganteaume did, tells a wonderful story. So too do the pictures in the book: one in particular, with Andy four to five yards down the track on the attack, gives the lie to the rationale developed to cover this grave injustice.

Not surprisingly, the colonial cricket establishment of the time, Queen’s Park, and the West Indies Cricket Board of Control, in all its magnificent planter class attire, adopted the position of Preston.

The selectors denied Ganteaume a place in the third Test, as a member of the touring party to India on the tour, in the historic 1950 series against England in England, on the team to Australia in 1951/52, against England in 1953, Australia here in 1955.

Indeed, the closest Andy came to selection again was on the 1957 tour to England. Having made 92 against the county team Glamorgan prior to the fifth Test, and feeling that he could be in the team, Andy told selector Frank Worrell, a friend experienced in the ways of colonial discrimination, that he would not want to be considered for selection if it would displace his good friend and professional, Nyron Asgarali, from the 75 pound sterling fee he would receive as a professional.

The point to be noted here is that the tour to England came almost ten years after his debut innings and century and when he was 37, certainly past his prime powers.

The details of the injustice and the comments and rationale used by the establishment figures to perpetuate colonial arbitrary rule are vital for those wanting an appreciation of where the society has come from.

Unfortunately, the pattern left by colonial cricket history, so ably outlined in Ganteaume’s My Story, remains permanent on the West Indian establishment.

But Andy’s book is much more than the recounting of colonial injustice against him and the likes of Nyron Asgarali. There are wonderful vignettes of people we know little about. For instance, that Reginald “Piggy” Joseph, fabled composer of calypsoes made famous by the Mighty Sparrow, was a star batsman at primary school.

We get a glimpse too of Clifford Roach, precursor in attacking spirit to the likes of Headley, the Ws, Sobers, Kanhai, Richards and Lara. And as could be expected, Andy spends time talking about his football days with his club, Maple, a conversation that even this inveterate Malvernite could appreciate.