Cricket: A Modern Anthology. Jonathan Agnew

for serious antagonism in countries such as Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago today.

      A drive along the potholed roads of Antigua to the little town of Liberta, which lies to the south of the island, is a reminder of those early days, for this is the settlement that was established by the first freed slaves in 1835. Meanwhile, on Barbados, on the main highway from the airport you will encounter the Emancipation Statue, which dramatically portrays a muscle-bound Afro-Caribbean slave stripped to the waist and staring skywards with a broken chain dangling from each wrist. The locals call him Bussa, after a legendary figure in the island’s history who helped inspire a revolt against slavery in 1816. Lining the highway is a succession of roundabouts dedicated to notable politicians and great Barbadian cricketers like Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Everton Weekes and the first black captain of West Indies, Sir Frank Worrell. I wonder if the planners ever intended that this series of roundabouts on such a friendly island should illustrate just how closely the Caribbean’s unhappy history is associated with cricket. Little surprise, then, that some opponents of the mighty West Indies sides in the 1970s and 80s believed that seeking revenge for the past lay behind the hostility of the most feared battery of fast bowlers there has ever been – that it was racially motivated, in other words. The West Indian players of the time deny this absolutely, pointing out that they were as driven and aggressive when they played against India and Pakistan, for example, as they were against England or Australia. Geoffrey Boycott, who stood in their way many times as an opening batsman, states categorically that he never heard a racist comment, or felt racially intimidated. Nevertheless, I am sure they gained a lot of motivation from their identity and great pride from being the first predominantly Afro-Caribbean team to sit on top of the world, relishing the new-found respect that came with it.

      When the British claimed South Africa from the Dutch in 1806, they discovered a colony that was already established strictly along racial lines. The abolition of slavery in 1834 proved to be the final straw for the Boer settlers, who, in their frustration at British rule, began their migration inland from the Cape on what became known as the Great Trek. They established Afrikaner strongholds, which developed into Boer republics in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, thus setting out the background for the two Boer Wars against the British in the late nineteenth century. During the second (1899–1902) an estimated twenty-eight thousand Boers – many of them women and children – died in appalling conditions in concentration camps set up by the British, whose victory established the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire. In 1931 it gained its independence from Britain.

      With racial segregation already implemented to some degree under colonial rule, independence enabled stricter laws to be imposed by the National Party, culminating in the establishment of apartheid in 1948 and the classification of people into four racial groups (‘native’, ‘white’, ‘coloured’ and ‘Asian’). Every part of everyday life was affected by apartheid, including cricket. The whites had their own cricket board, the South African Cricket Association (SACA), and only white players could represent South Africa. Non-whites were welcome to watch, but had to do so in segregated parts of the cricket grounds. Despite South Africa’s opposition in those days being exclusively from England, Australia and New Zealand (i.e. white), the non-white spectators usually vented their feelings by supporting the visitors. The D’Oliveira affair of 1968 (discussed at length later in this chapter) highlighted the true horror of apartheid to the world. The sporting isolation of South Africa contributed strongly to the dismantling of that abhorrent political system, and cricket played a leading role.

      Over the border, in what is now Zimbabwe, the British formed the colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1895. This became simply Rhodesia when the then Prime Minister Ian Smith declared unilateral independence from Britain in 1965. The Republic of Rhodesia was proclaimed in 1970 but was recognized only by its neighbour South Africa until full independence from Britain was gained after years of civil war, known as the Bush War, and Zimbabwe was formed in 1980. Zimbabwe appeared in the 1983 Cricket World Cup, famously beating Australia by 13 runs at Trent Bridge, and played its first Test match in 1992.

      The Indian subcontinent was inextricably linked with the British Empire for centuries. Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, was ruled by the British from 1815, when once again they ousted the Dutch, and then imported up to a million Tamils from southern India to work in the tea and coffee plantations for which Sri Lanka is famous. The local Buddhist and Sinhalese population believed that their British rulers showed favouritism towards the Tamil immigrants, creating a schism between the communities. Caused directly by colonialism, this produced a long-running conflict and a civil war lasting twenty-five years that has cost an estimated hundred thousand lives and led to accusations of human-rights abuses by the Sri Lankan government when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were apparently wiped out in 2009.

      If anyone still harbours any doubts about the domination of the British Empire, then India, which had to be split into three countries, provides the most obvious and richest legacy. Pakistan and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) are the direct results of colonialism, having been formed by the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics. The plan approved by the British government in 1947 drew lines and frontiers where none previously existed to establish the Islamic state of Pakistan in order to enable the Hindus to live separately from the minority Muslims, and vice versa, if they chose to do so. Pakistan was divided into two, East and West, with the small matter of a thousand miles of Indian mainland between them. Estimates vary as to how many lost their lives as 14.5 million people rushed to relocate in their preferred country, but it is accepted that up to one million perished. Tensions dramatically escalated between the two religions, which had never been so obviously separated before, and such was the hostility and mistrust that relations between India and Pakistan have been plagued ever since. Ownership of Kashmir remains hotly disputed by India and Pakistan, but Bangladesh broke free from Pakistan after the brutal Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. This conflict produced the highest number of prisoners of war since the Second World War, and an estimated ten million refugees flooded the eastern states of India.

      British interest in India began with the traders dealing primarily in tea, cotton, silk and opium who set sail in 1601 to form the East India Company. The Dutch and Portuguese had already established trading posts in Eastern India and hostilities between the three were commonplace, but as Britain gained supremacy against the Europeans – including the French, who were late arrivals in that part of the world – relations with the suppressed locals were often fractious. The best known of the early uprisings occurred in June 1756 when the Nawab of Bengal attacked and took the British fort in Calcutta. Those British who were captured by the Nawab’s forces were placed in a dungeon measuring 14 ft by 18 ft, which became known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. In the stifling summer heat, it is claimed 123 of the 146 prisoners died as a result of suffocation, crushing or heat stroke. Major-General Robert Clive attacked the Nawab’s camp in February 1757 and the victory that followed resulted in the Nawab surrendering control of Calcutta back to the British. The Battle of Plassey followed in June and produced another victory for Clive over the Nawab, whose troops had failed to protect their gunpowder against the rain and were powerless to fight back. This established British military supremacy in Bengal and finally over Northern India as well, and Clive, by now known as Clive of India, returned to London as a legendary figure – and a very wealthy one too.

      One hundred years later there was a mutiny among the sepoys – the Indian members of the British East India Company’s army – that quickly spread to most of Northern India, and became known as the Indian Rebellion. The British held out under siege for six months in the city of Lucknow, where more than three thousand men, women and children gathered in the Regency Compound; only one thousand survived. Fifty miles down the road, hundreds more lost their lives in the Siege of Cawnpore (now Kanpur) and the subsequent Bibighar Massacre after an offer of safe passage was reneged upon. I have visited the beautifully maintained Kanpur Memorial Church (originally called All Souls Cathedral), with its many monuments and graves for the British who died there, and recall seeing many headstones bearing the inscription ‘murdered by mutineers’.

      The uprising, which has also been described as India’s First War of Independence, was finally put down in Gwalior the following year, but the rebellion led directly to the dissolution of the East India Company. Back home in London, it was decided that British