Cricket has long been a way of life for the people of the islands of the West Indies. It was a way of self-assertion among the descendants of the mid-19th century indentured labour from British India, and Port Mourant in British Guyana, a slab of steamy country on the South American continent, was the rallying point. Indians had already begun to play cricket with a fair degree of proficiency at the club level by the 1890s. The Black population emerging from their African forefathers brought in as slaves to work in the British-owned plantations, took to cricket a little after the Indians in the islands and soon became equally proficient, and, over time overtook them.
Clem Seecharan’s book, From Ranji to Rohan is a feelingly written and rigorously researched account of the role of cricket in the lives of Indians in the sugar plantations of Guyana. It is indeed an amplification of the sub-title to the book — Cricket and Indian Identity in Colonial Guyana, 1890s–1960s.
It is the rise of Rohan Bholalal Kanhai in 1959 on the West Indies tour of India, in particular his scintillating knock of 256 runs at Eden Gardens, Calcutta that brought a glow of pride to the faces of the Indians in Guyana, matching in intensity when Cheddi Jagan (1914-1997) became prime minister of the state. Kanhai recalls his batting feat thus: India’s Subhash Gupte was the greatest leg-spinner I have ever played against. Gupte was India’s golden boy, the only real world-class player they had. (It) was not until we moved to Calcutta for the third Test that the rabbit turned. I belted 34 boundaries in just under five hours and shared an unbroken stand of 179 in 144 minutes with (Basil) Butcher. My century made in 132 minutes, was the quickest of the series. The next day I scythed my way to 256, unaware that I had topped Frank Worrell’s record Test score against India — 237 in Kingston...(But) mastering Gupte was my prize.”
The only other Guyanese batsman of Indian origin to make such an impression internationally in later years was the equally talented but not so consistent
Alwin Kalicharan; but that was over 30 years ago. Among others who came and went after him was Dhani Ram, who had impressed the great Clive Lloyd, the most successful of West Indies captains, and an explosive batsman to boot.
Kanhai was not the first cricketer of Indian extraction to win fame in West
Indies cricket. It was a diminutive spin bowler from Trinidad named Sonny Ramadhin who, at 21, teamed up with left-arm spinner Alf Valentine to bowl the West Indies to their first ever series win in England in the summer of 1950.
Leading cricket writer John Arlott wrote of Ramadhin, “He was always a diligent and persistent bowler who varied his bowling from ball to ball, the arc, the point of delivery, the degree and direction of spin all being altered in turn, so that the batsman facing him was given no mental rest.” Ramadhin, for the record had only played three first-class matches at home before being picked up for the Test side! He bowled both off-breaks and leg-breaks with the same right arm off-break action. Shiv Narain Chanderpaul is the only contemporary West Indian cricketer of really high calibre from Guyana.
Seecharan makes us aware how great a role club cricket played in raising the standard of the game in Guyana. Sport often becomes the expression of a people’s cultural and political aspirations; it was true of Guyanese cricket.
Hilary Beckles, a respected scholar wrote, “… by 1938 the masses had confronted local whites and the imperial state in a series of rebellions during which they demanded the political franchise, social reform, and access to economic resources. It was a revolutionary decade for the West Indies, and cricket, the people’s primary cultural form, became infused by this ideological temperature.”
From club cricket to annual matches between counties in Guyana was a step upwards, and its revival in 1953-54 gave a fillip to the game. Basil Butcher, distinguished Afro-Guyanese cricketer and West Indies batsman, remembered, “For the first time it became virtually impossible for a young player of real promise to go unnoticed. Quite possibly neither Rohan Kanhai, Joe Solomon, nor I would have reached Test cricket under the old system. All three of us won a place at national and international level playing in the inter-county tournament (in 1954).”
Guyanese cricketers were not so fortunate earlier. Ivan Madray, a promising leg-spinner who, unfortunately played but a single Test for the West Indies, recalls, (Saranga) Baichu, “was a tremendous, frightening bowler, similar to Eric Atkinson (of Barbados), a medium-pace cutter. Saranga cut it viciously: off-cutters, outers as well — in and out. He had a very short run, but he really pinned the ball down, and he bowled at the stumps.”
Seecharan observes immediately after the comment, “It sounds as if he would have been a most impressive bowler in England, but it was not an age when backwoodsmen could easily escape their anonymous fate, however gifted.”
This is a serious book on cricket and its socio-cultural implications in Guyana. It bears comparison with CLR James’s classic, Beyond A Boundary , which is about the West Indies as a whole.
— parthafm@gmail.com