SHOOTING HOOPS AGAINST DARWIN'S ATHLETES: A BARBADIAN RESPONSE TO JOHN HOBERMAN

Keith A. P. Sandiford

University of Manitoba

The purpose of this article is two-fold: to provide a critical review of John Hoberman's controversial book and to show how the Blacks in the small island of Barbados have tackled the complex problems of myth and race which AfricanAmericans are finding so difficult to solve. Its underlying thesis is that there are some vital and positive lessons which American Blacks and racial biologists can learn from studying the Barbadian experience.1

I

Based on a wide (if curious and selective) array of sources, Hoberman's study is passionately written. It is wordy and repetitious and there is more than an occasional hint of overstatement. It is also disconcertingly sexist, in that it deliberately excludes any discussion of women's sports. But the author has produced a useful book which will have achieved its purpose if it manages to persuade AfricanAmericans to think more rationally about their biology and physiology and to focus more sharply on intellectual exercises. Hoberman laments that American Blacks have too profound a faith in their athletic aptitude and, as a result, have too often neglected to give of their best in nonsporting pursuits. It is this unfortunate attitude as well as the equally profound faith on the part of white Americans in their own intellectual and moral superiority that have combined to perpetuate European myths about racial inequalities. So long as these myths and images endure, so long will North American Blacks continue to be a disadvantaged people. The tragedy here, in Hoberman's view, is that the black American athletic stars and successful professionals have subscribed inadvertently to nineteenth century fallacies and have therefore done too little to destroy them. This American image of the Blacks as athletes, dancers, musicians, clowns and criminals has also been encouraged by the almost total invisibility of other black role models.

There is far too much pessimism and exaggeration here. Hoberman's critical comments on the sad decline of intellectualism among black American males are not supported by rigorous scientific research and his passages on this subject contain no empirical evidence or supporting statistical data. It is questionable, too, whether the majority of successful black American athletes and professionals undervalue academic achievement in the manner that he has claimed. In fact, almost all of the African-American athletes who ply their craft in Canadian cities have been emphasizing the value of education in their speeches to young Canadian Blacks. There may very well also be a more vibrant black American intelligentsia than Hoberman is prepared to admit; and he has perhaps unfairly belittled the role of such magazines as Ebony and Jet in their flagrant and unrelenting promotion of nonathletic role models. Even a casual examination of the wellknown Encyclopedia of Black America, published as long ago as 1981, would have compelled Hoberman to modify his stance considerably.2

Hoberman is obviously on the right path, however, when he denounces the survival of nineteenth century fallacies which automatically assume the innate stupidity of Blacks. He is also right in attacking the oldfashioned and unworthy Law of Compensation which equates athleticism with intellectual deficiency. His sharp criticisms of racial biologists are perceptive and timely. Blacks as well as American Whites need to heed all of his messages if ever the United States wants to achieve some semblance of racial and ethnic harmony.

The book is divided into three sections: I. Shooting Hoops Under The Bell Curve; II. Prospero and Caliban: Sport as Racial Competition; III. Dissecting John Henry: The Search for Racial Athletic Aptitude. The first section is devoted to a surgical destruction of The Bell Curve, the controversial bestseller written by Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein, who brazenly suggested that American Blacks are doomed to irremediable intellectual inferiority and encouraged them therefore to aim in compensation at athletic excellence. Hoberman very much fears that already the Blacks have accepted this recommendation and are thus doing irreparable damage to their nonsporting prospects. He blames the black middle class for helping to establish this sports fixation by themselves accepting athletes as the most prominent symbols of black achievement. Black intellectuals, too, have shown too little interest in persuading black children to cherish academic ambitions.

To make the situation much worse (as Hoberman sees it), some black leaders, like Revd Jesse Jackson, for instance, have actually promoted the sports fixation by arguing that "sports can help change the despair in our communities into hope [and] replace low esteem with confidence" (p. 9). The result is that AfricanAmerican life, in Hoberman's view, has come to be dominated by a special preoccupation with athletics. What he does not pause to consider here is the obvious thought, that might have undermined his whole argument, that the American sports fixation may well be considered as largely a white phenomenon. It is, in fact, the white element in the United States contributing most to this sports addiction by providing it with its financial base. It is corporate white America that is investing huge sums on these sporting activities; it is mainly white middle class Americans who can afford to be spectators at the majority of athletic events; and it is mainly white Americans of every class and gender who are involved in the public adulation of the black sports stars.

The universal perception, nevertheless, has been that sport offers the only avenue of escape from deprivation. This notion was not always prevalent, as Hoberman does his best to demonstrate. He sees the present fixation as developing steadily after the 1930s. American Blacks, after all, were not especially noted for their athleticism in earlier periods. But the success of such role models as Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Jesse Owens had much to do with the emergence of the idea of black athletic superiority during the interwar years. Black contributions to the war effort in the early 1940s, too, did much for the gradual movement towards desegregation in sports as symbolized by Jackie Robinson's career in major league baseball. Regrettably, however, the hoopla which accompanied "Jackie Robinson's Sad Song" (pp. 28-51) failed to lead to complete racial integration or harmony in the sporting arena. While most American sports are dominated by black superstars they continue to be administered by white owners, managers and coaches. The National Basketball Association (NBA), for example, is almost monopolized by Blacks on the court but its administration has remained entirely white and the illusory image of racial harmony is encouraged by the conservative media which deliberately underplay themes like conflict and rebellion. Too few of the black superstars, so far as Hoberman can tell, are prepared to challenge the system and insist on the hiring of a proportionate number of black coaches and managers.

This situation has satisfied the white majority because it fits neatly within their own Victorian mindset. The exaltation of black athletes is accompanied by the exaltation of Whites in every other field of human endeavour. Hence, for instance, too little was done to promote the black aviators who had shown such phenomenal skills during World War II. Hoberman sees this strategy, this deliberate "Suppression of the Black Male Action Figure", as part of the usual conspiracy. It allows white America to perpetuate the racial myth of black inequality on which the whole social structure has long been based. To him "the disappearance of the black soldier and aviator as public figures in American life after 1945 was significant, because it denied an officially sanctioned modern status to black men who might otherwise have come to be identified with intellectual mastery and technological competence in the eyes of the nation" (p. 75). Hence the unfortunate exclusion of Blacks from American space programmes. It is all too easy to confer celebrity status on a black athlete; this "confirms his role as a mere surrogate for the more substantial male figures he has replaced" (p. 75).

This chapter, however, is incomplete. It says nothing whatever about such successful black aviators as Banjamin 0. Davis, Jr. or even Daniel `Chappie' James, Jr., the famous US Air Force Officer who was decorated for his services as a jet fighter pilot in Korea and Vietnam and later became US commander in chief of the North American Air Defense Command, responsible for all US and Canadian air space defense forces.3 Nor is any mention made of Dr Mae Jemison who, as recently as 12 September 1992, joined the sevenmember crew of the space shuttle Endeavour and spent 190 hours in space, in what is still NASA's most successful mission to date.4 Hoberman might also have provided a better balance, when dealing with US military matters, by referring to the outstandingly successful careers of such AfricanAmericans as Gen. Benjamin 0. Davis, Sr. and Gen. Colin Powell.

Hoberman contends that the fate of the aviators has also befallen the black intellectuals both within and outside academia (pp. 7695). This section is easily his weakest. It contains some perceptive observations on the roles of W.E.B. Du Bois, Harry Edwards, Franklin Frazier and Kelly Miller, among others. But here was an excellent opportunity for Hoberman to have emphasized the enormous contributions of such eminent African-American intellectuals as Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, John Hope Franklin, Alain Locke, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, Revd Howard Thurman, Carter G. Woodson and a host of others. He could himself have gone a long way towards demolishing the myth of race by stressing that vital contributions to American civilization have been made over the years by an impressive list of African-Americans in a wide variety of fields. He ought to have drawn attention to the imaginative and practical inventions of such AfricanAmericans as Percy Julian, Jan Matzeliger, Elijah McCoy and Granville T. Woods; while showing how important was the work of such African-American pioneers as Dr Benjamin Carson, Dr Richard C. Drew and Dr Daniel Hale Williams in the field of medicine. He could have stressed that the contribution of American Blacks to modern art, music and literature is substantial. As Hoberman is particularly interested in race and sport, he might also have made better use of the long and informative article on that subject, written in 1994 by Jeffrey T. Sammons of New York University.5 Sammons amply demonstrated that there were numerous black historians and sociologists participating in the interesting discourse on modern sport and popular culture. That seminal piece is mentioned in a single footnote (pp. 76, 260) without any attempt to address some of the important issues it raises. Sadly, Hoberman chose instead to devote disproportionate space to Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver who are clearly not among the best choices as preeminent intellectuals.

We can agree, however, with Hoberman's implicit suggestion that it will be useful for American intellectuals, both black and white, to reexamine their approach to athleticism. One can hardly expect a sportsminded nation to ignore its sporting heroes, but the intellectuals should obviously try harder to secure a higher profile for themselves and other successful nonsporting professionals to debunk forever the pernicious myth of AfricanAmerican intellectual inferiority and general antiintellectualism. What Hoberman ought also to have emphasized is that such white superstars as Larry Bird, Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Orr have been lionized by the establishment without any attempt to denigrate their intellectual capacity. White success on the field of play has never been associated with moral or spiritual deficiencies off it.

In Part II, Hoberman shows that the American experience is not peculiar. The ascendancy of the black athlete over the past century has demolished forever the nineteenth century European image of the white man's total superiority. Europe now finds itself in awe of these physical "Wonders out of Africa" (pp. 99-107). The whole sporting world has been turned upside down to the extent that lowly Sri Lanka could win the World Cup of cricket in 1996 and, in Europe, most sports have become racially integrated in a manner that would have been utterly incomprehensible in the colonial age. "The decline of the European empires has meant the decline of the white male and the world of sport is still adjusting to the psychological dislocations brought about by this loss of prestige" (p. 107). The European response has been similar to America's: admit the palpable physical superiority of the Blacks and put it down as compensation for their intellectual deficiency. This approach has naturally led to the popularity of tall tales of superman miracles supposedly performed by African strong men. Hoberman ranks among these "improbable" feats the story of Billy the Blackboy (p. 109) throwing a cricket ball 140 yards. Had he attended a secondary school in the Caribbean during the 1940s, however, Hoberman would have understood that this was not such a "miraculous performance" after all. Barbadian schoolboys, both white and black, had long shown themselves capable of throwing the cricket ball in excess of 120 yards while still in their teens.6 In fact, in the same year in which "King Billy" the Aborigine achieved his monstrous throw at Clermont in Queensland, Ross Mackenzie, a white Canadian, is credited with a throw of 140 yards 9 inches at Toronto and the current world record, established in the 1880s in an event that has long ceased to be popular, is 140 yards 2 feet by Robert Percival, another white athlete.7

Even though "highperformance sports are one of the defining traits of modern civilization, and black athletes monopolize some of their most conspicuous élites, ... athletic achievement has done little to transform the premodern image of black people" (p. 119). The unfortunate fact here is (as Hoberman takes pains to show) that images, their manufacture and perpetuation, have been left totally within the white man's control. Such powerful organizations as the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Soccer Federation (FIFA), and the international governing body of track and field (IAAF) are all administered by wealthy white families. Blacks, however brilliant, are often assigned to positions that do not allow them to demonstrate qualities of leadership. Thus all the major sports remain under the thumb of oldfashioned hierarchies. There is considerable validity in all of these claims, but Hoberman should not have failed to observe that the International Cricket Council (ICC), once completely dominated by the white element representing Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa, is falling gradually under the influence of Blacks and Browns. The black Barbadian, Sir Clyde Walcott, served as its president from 1995 to 1997 and has been succeeded by Jagmohan Dalmiya of India thanks largely to the skilful lobbying of the mainly African and Asian 22 Associate Members.8

But of far greater significance to Hoberman here is the white reconstruction of psychological props the issue which he tackles most aggressively in Part III. The globalization of modern sports has been accompanied by the globalization of racial folklore about athletic performance. The Europeans and white Americans have resigned themselves to athletic inferiority with a curious sense of fatalism and have simply concluded that the Africans have been the beneficiaries of unfair natural (biological and genetic) advantages. Hence the quest for biological explanations and the unfortunate resurrection of nineteenth century forms of scientific racism even though most of the questions then raised about physiologic racial differences had already been answered in the negative. Inevitably, this search for racial differences seems intended to demonstrate that the Negro is a "defective type" (pp. 15160). Even the otherwise positive notion of black hardiness and vitality turns out to be a part of the general "theme of the primitive human type who is biologically different from civilized man" (p. 173). This comforting image of Africans as hardy but impassive creatures has thus endured in a variety of medical, anthropological and popular forms. All the old racist mythologies about black skin, pain- resistance, heat tolerance, fecundity, hypertension, sexual athleticism and physical precocity have remained triumphantly alive (despite what modern medical research has shown to the contrary).

This relentless investigation of black athletic aptitude has coincided, from a black perspective, with "two fateful developments: the athleticizing of the black criminal and theorizing about the biological causes of violent behaviour" (p. 208). Even more tragic is the way in which the media have succeeded in criminalizing the black athlete in the minds of the gullible public. Throughout the twentieth century, in fact, the muscular negro has been effectively demonized. Most white literature has focused much too sharply on the links (real and imaginary) between black muscularity, intemperance and criminality. Faced with this kind of instinctive thinking on the part of the American élite, the AfricanAmerican intellectuals have tended to tread, in Hoberman's view, much too warily. "This fear of racial science also underlies the angry resistance to research into racial athletic aptitudes" (p. 220).

The final chapter, entitled "The Fear of Racial Biology", contains (pp. 22142) the major thrust of Hoberman's sermon. He very much regrets that the whole field of racial biology has been left to the enemy by cowardly black intellectuals and liberal white physiologists. The suppression of such rational discussion has only served to invest recycled folklore with undeserving legitimacy and to allow such incompetents as J. Philippe Rushton to publish racist nonsense with impunity. Hoberman admits the possibility that there may well be biological differences between the races; there is evidence enough to suggest some differences with respect to such matters as bone density, testosterone levels and rates of otosclerosis; but there is no need to link any of these differences with intellectual capacity. Furthermore, it is necessary to place this racial biology in its proper sociocultural context and to analyze with great care the impact that history and the environment have had on African, Asian and European genetics. Even in Africa itself there are vast differences among Blacks, and any scientist examining racial athletic aptitudes must at once be struck by the curious fact that while West Africans historically have performed better in the sprints, they have never been able to compete on even terms with the East Africans in the longer distances. Hoberman's suggestion, then, is a very timely one indeed. If the Blacks leave the study of racial biology to blatant racists and unqualified journalists, the chances are that the myth of white intellectual and moral supremacy will survive forever.

II

Hoberman could have made all of his points with even greater force had he, in Part II, drawn the attention of his audience to some successful colonial responses. The section on cricket provided the opportunity to show that sports had helped not only to empower the Blacks and the Browns on the field of play but to undermine the whole European racial mythology. Of course, the essential difference between the United States and such former colonies as India, Pakistan and the West Indies is demographic and political. Whereas the white element has remained in the majority in North America, it has certainly not done so in the newly independent countries, where the political and academic systems have also come to be dominated by nonwhites. The intelligentsia in these places have also tried deliberately to demolish all vestiges of Victorian racism and there can be no more talk or thought in these modern nations about white superiority of any kind.

Among the former British West Indian dependencies, the most English, racist and Victorian by far was the island of Barbados, the first of all the Caribbean colonies to be effectively occupied by the British. Although the white element amounted to less than ten percent of the total population, it long controlled every aspect of Barbadian life. Entry into wealthy white sports clubs, such as Pickwick and Wanderers, was impossible for black men who also found only limited prospects for promotion within the clergy, civil service or the teaching profession. The vast majority of the businesses and plantations belonged to the white élite, who employed few black accountants, managers, foremen or secretaries before the 1950s.9 So complete, however, has been the social revolution that within the last forty years the vast bulk of Barbadian life has fallen into the hands of the Blacks. The white segment still controls a disproportionate share of the island's wealth, but the economic gap has significantly been narrowed and there are Blacks among most of the directorates now in existence in Bridgetown, the island's capital. Even the conservative Barbados Shipping & Trading Company (BS&T) has for some years now been appointing nonwhite directors, like Harry Sandiford, and Clyde Walcott (the former cricket star). All the key positions in the businesses, schools, colleges and churches are now monopolized by Blacks and there is every reason to believe that, on the whole, the new professionals have improved the quality of service in these areas. Promotion, after all, is now based on merit and has ceased to depend entirely on accidents of birth.10

It would have been impossible in such a context for any group to preach a gospel of racial inequality. But it has to be understood that the emerging black bourgeoisie was never really as silent or as passive as its American counterpart. It had to fight a desperate struggle, beginning almost as soon as Emancipation had been decreed in the 1830s, to gain the sort of triumphs that it has steadily achieved. The ex-slaves instinctively realised that their social and economic salvation lay in education and training. As Professor Hilary Beckles has observed, "there developed a `cult' of education among the older generation who insisted upon their children's acquisition of literate skills" and the report of an Education Commission in 1838 could state that "on the part of the labourers themselves there appears to be generally a greater wish to secure for their children the blessings of education".11 Hence the enormous pressure on schools, of which there always appeared to have been a shortage in the nineteenth century. Encouraged by a few progressive white clergymen, the élite built schools at a phenomenal rate in Barbados at a time when even the metropolitan government in Britain was incapable of thinking in terms of any kind of national education system. By the first decade of the twentieth century, Barbados had practically eliminated illiteracy and could boast the astonishing achievement of one elementary school per square mile by 1909.12 It is true that many of these buildings were small and shabby (by western standards) and that the equipment was often rudimentary. But the statistics nevertheless tell a very positive story.

This black preoccupation with education continued to the point where, by the 1980s, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) government found itself devoting as much as 23% of the public expenditures to schools, colleges and libraries. In 198485, for instance, the island's total public expenditures amounted approximately to $574 million, of which almost $127 million was spent on education. This was so astonishing a performance that the editor of the 1987Britannica Book of the Year, apparently refusing to believe that the announced 22.4% could possibly be right, placed the percentage of the Barbadian budget devoted to education at 2.4 to correspond with his own conception of `developing' norms.13 In 1987, when the government projected an estimated budget of $704.6 million, it already had earmarked $152.3 million for this purpose as well.14 By the end of that decade, not surprisingly, there were about 40 public and private secondary schools catering to more than 30,000 students in an island no more than 166 square miles in extent and with a population of slightly more than 250,000. Barbados also supported two tertiary institutions (Codrington College and the Cave Hill branch of the University of the West Indies), a huge Community College, a Technical Institute and a teacher's training college at Erdiston. These institutions supplemented over 130 primary schools catering to more than 35,000 pupils.15

Even in the more prosperous industrial countries, governments have never been able to treat education in this way. The United States, for example, is impeded by the necessity to budget extravagantly for defence and diplomacy. In 1986, for instance, at a time when Barbados was focusing so sharply on education and public health, more than 70% of the U.S. government expenditures went into defence, social security, medicare, and the interest on debt charges. Less than 4% of the national revenues could consequently be spent on education.16 As late as 1984-85, on the other hand, Barbados could blithely devote a mere $19.9 million to defence and national security.17

Those who are interested in the study of class and race will find an element of curious irony in this Barbadian saga. Even Bishop William Hart Coleridge, the progressive white Anglican priest who promoted the notion that education would make the ex-slaves better Christians and more productive citizens, did not think it appropriate to educate the Blacks "beyond their station".18 When the selfish white élite was pressured into establishing some form of national system of education in the nineteenth century, one of its main aims was to create a two-tiered system of secondary tuition from which its own children would profit the most. Hence the establishment of three socalled `firstgrade' secondary schools by the Education Act of 1878: Harrison College and the Lodge School for boys and Queen's College for girls. These institutions were charged with the responsibility of preparing their pupils for Higher School Certificates and the prestigious Island and Barbados Scholarships.19 Tuition fees were set sufficiently high (£5 per term) to discourage the children of the lower middle classes but not high enough to deprive the children of the élite from achieving a good secondary education at reasonable cost. White benefactors established a host of scholarships and bursaries mainly to help the poorer Whites whom they needed to perform bureaucratic tasks which were then still felt to be beyond the capacity of Blacks. The Whites failed, however, to legislate against black competition and the inevitable result was the gradual infiltration of Blacks into the first-grade system. Indeed, by the 1890s, a significant minority of black children were attending Harrison College; and Combermere School, the most important in the 'secondgrade' category, became famous as the first institution in the old British Empire to offer secondary training to black students. By the time of Revd Arthur Evelyn Armstrong's tenure as headmaster (193446), the balance had shifted to the point where white students at Combermere found themselves in the minority. When Stanton O'C. Gittens became the first black headmaster of this school in 1961, there were hardly any white students left in it.20

Barbadian Blacks steadily demolished the Victorian stereotype of the Black as intellectually inferior. One of the earliest blows struck at this racist orthodoxy was delivered in 1895 by Thomas Webb Roberts, when he became the first African-Barbadian to achieve a Barbados Scholarship. A brilliant cricketer who represented Barbados while still at Harrison College, he went off to Oxford, where he performed extremely well as a scholar but was refused his `blue' as a cricketer on purely racial grounds. It did not matter that he scored 51 runs for the Freshmen in 1898 and a fine 54 for the Seniors in 1899. After qualifying as a barrister, he joined the British Colonial Service and ended up as a judge in Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka). He played excellent cricket for his adopted country and played a significant role in the development of the sport there when he also served as an administrator on the Ceylon Cricket Board. Thomas Webb Roberts, who survived until 1976, was the role model for countless Barbadian students during the twentieth century.21

Harrison College proved to be one of the most famous of all the secondary schools in the old British Empire. It produced a long list of eminent scholars, particularly in mathematics and the classics, as well as an even longer list of eminent cricketers. It profited from the fact that several Victorian educators, steeped in the gospel stated simply in the phrase mens sana in corpore sano, served as headmasters for an unconscionably long time. Such British scholars as Horace Deighton, Dr Herbert A. Dalton, Arthur SomersCocks, Harold Noad Haskell and John Coleman Hammond administered the school for almost a hundred years after 1872. They sincerely believed that a feeble body could not support a healthy brain and consequently aimed deliberately at the production of scholarathletes. There was never any suggestion here that physical excellence could possibly be accompanied by intellectual inferiority.22

This tendency to link brain with brawn was a peculiar feature of Barbadian secondary education for many years. Harrison College was behaving exactly the same way, for instance, as Combermere School and the Lodge, whose headmasters had in fact been trained by Deighton and/or his apostles. More often than not, the brightest student was the captain of cricket and football as well as the head prefect and sometimes one of the leaders of the cadets and scouts to boot. It was also normal for the teaching staff to elevate the cricket captain to the office of head prefect sometimes when he was not the school's leading scholar. The question of race seldom arose in these matters and several black students, especially after World War II, captained their schools with great distinction.

The most notorious exception to the general rule occurred in 1946, when Sam Headley's appointment to the school captaincy of the Lodge created a great furore and led indeed to the resignation of Thomas L. Evans, the white English headmaster. But, in those days, the Lodge was still being dominated by a white élite and the black element in the school was much weaker numerically than it eventually became. The conservative white families in the parish of St John complained bitterly to the school's Governing Body and some of the white prefects actually went on strike.23 By 1957, so rapidly had the situation changed, there was no such excitement when Oscar W. Jordan, a black student, served as head prefect, house captain, president of the School Guild, editor of The Lodge School Record, cricket captain and a cadet officer. Not only was Jordan one of the finest athletes in the school, he was its most promising student intellectually. He won a much-coveted Barbados Scholarship in 1958 and proceeded to the University of Edinburgh to qualify as a medical doctor.24 He returned to Barbados afterwards to practise medicine with much success (but made no impact as a cricketer).

An essential difference between twentieth century Barbados and its U.S. counterpart has to do not only with politics and demography but with clearly defined mindsets. Hoberman complains bitterly about the American sports fixation. Barbados, on the other hand, has for a long time been governed by two addictions: education and cricket. So powerful are these impulses that the Barbadians have never been able to disentangle them. Until very recently, the élite schools concentrated on the singular manufacture of excellent scholarcricketers and it was assumed that any boy who could play cricket with any degree of skill had to be endowed with intelligence and strength of character. Cricket was a stepping stone to life in general, the platform from which any successful career might be launched. This obsession with cricket and education sometimes transcended matters of class and race in a community that was otherwise notoriously racist and snobbish.25

When organized cricket first came to Barbados late in the nineteenth century, clubs sprang up to represent classes and colours. Wanderers catered to the wealthy urban Whites, Pickwick to urban middle class Whites, Leeward and Windward to rural Whites, and Spartan to middle class Blacks. They recognized their class and racial differences but agreed nevertheless to play against each other in regular annual competition. They were also in agreement that lower class Blacks were inadmissible. Hence their stringent clause excluding all `professionals' even though there was no real professional cricketer in the island at that time.26 This clause was challenged in 1899 by Delmont St. Clair `Fitz Lily' Hinds, an apprenticed painter. Surprisingly, he gained admission to the exclusive Spartan club, thus causing an enormous sensation, and forced the Barbados Cricket Challenge Cup Committee (BCCC) to strengthen the relevant regulation (to prevent any repetition of this Spartan `chicanery'). Lower middleincome Blacks could find no cricket haven in this island until a rebellious faction seceded from Spartan in 1914 and founded Empire.27 And lower class Blacks from the rural districts were unable to participate in any form of organized cricket at all until the formation of the Barbados Cricket League (BCL) in 1937.28 So strong was the Barbadian commitment to `order and degree' that even the Empire Cricket Club set limits to the types of individuals it was itself willing to admit. Consequently, some lower class Blacks gained admission only after having proven themselves as brilliant cricketers in the BCL. This was the case, for instance, with such international stars as Clairmonte Depeiza, Charlie Griffith, Conrad Hunte, Seymour Nurse and Everton Weekes.29 As recently as 1994, Othniel `Hitler' Downes, who had played four matches for Barbados in the late 1950s, could be heard complaining bitterly of his shabby treatment at the hands of the Empire administration when he sought entry.30

The complex linkages between cricket and education in Barbados become clearer when one examines the question of class. Just as it proved impossible to exclude the children of middle class Blacks from Harrison College and the Lodge, where they automatically played cricket, their former classmates and teammates could not exclude them from participation in organized cricket afterwards. Spartan therefore proved an extension of Harrison College for a long time after 1893, while Empire became very much a haven for Old Combermerians; and Old Lodge Boys played a substantial role in the establishment of Pickwick (1882) and Wanderers (1877). If the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) was founded in 1933 largely by the alumni of Harrison College and the Lodge School, the BCL was the brainchild of Old Combermerians.31

But the study of race and class in Barbadian cricket reveals a number of surprising oddities and ambiguities. The majority of these spring from the fact that segregation was already such a prominent feature of Barbadian life in the late nineteenth century that there was never any need to legalize it.32 In Barbados, the Whites did not account for more than a small percentage of the population; but so complete was their hegemony that they were never left with the numbing sense of insecurity which seemed to hypnotize the Europeans in such countries as Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Blacks were routinely excluded from such cricket clubs as Leeward, Pickwick, Wanderers and Windward; but this was a matter of convention rather than law. Blacks were not encouraged to enter the élite schools, it is true, but once they had arrived there they could not then be excluded. They could seldom reach the highest positions in the schools, services, courts and the church, but (having been trained in AngloSaxon colleges) they had to be appointed to less prestigious positions in the academic, civil, judicial and religious institutions. In any case, there were simply too few Europeans to man the citadel. Hence the use of native auxiliaries as the least of all possible evils.

It was this peculiar kind of accommodation which provided Barbadian society with a certain sense of stability throughout the long and difficult postemancipation period. The awesome power of convention was such that all members of the society knew precisely where they stood. As late as the 1950s, for instance, my oldest brother (Basil) just knew that he was going to become a member of the Empire Club, if he joined any cricket club at all, and my youngest brother (Birt) was destined for the BCL as he did not have the benefit of secondary education. Even more interestingly, a third brother (Harry), whose complexion was much lighter than ours, could have gained admission to CarIton or the Young Men's Progressive Club (YMPC) then catering to lowermiddle class Whites and Coloureds, had he shown any particular promise as a cricketer. Those old conventions, in a word, had the force of law. But they seemed to strengthen rather than diminish the society's respect for cricket and for education.

The fact is that the establishment itself delivered a number of ambiguous messages: on the one hand, cricket was the medium through which the colonists could be civilized and brought more meekly into the imperial fold. Those subjects who accepted the cricket culture were least likely to reject the other elements of Anglo-Saxonism. On the other hand, a very deliberate attempt was made by the local élite to deter the poorer Blacks in Barbados from enjoying the benefits of civilization on the same sward as the white minority. Complicated questions of class and colour thus operated to maintain oldfashioned distinctions of order and degree. On the one hand. the BCCC refused to admit Fenwick into the regular competition; on the other, it encouraged the growth of this fine lower class black club by allowing its players occasionally to use the regular grounds and facilities of BCCC affiliates and by seeking the services of the `professionals' to hone the skills of its own gentlemenplayers (especially when preparing for intercolonial competition).33

In colonial Barbados, nobody questioned the right of the unwashed multitude to play the greatest game that civilized man had yet invented. The talents of Delmont Hinds, Oliver Layne and William Shepherd were universally admired by most white Barbadians who only wished that these superb cricketers had been white and therefore eligible to join their respective clubs. The Blacks themselves bought enthusiastically into the AngloSaxon ideology and placed great store not only on cricketing prowess but on cricketing forms and formalities. Even the poor black spectators instinctively placed cricket ahead of race and class. While class antagonisms had much to do with the bitter rivalry which developed between the two élite clubs, Pickwick and Wanderers, their contests at Kensington Oval and the Bay invariably drew large and excited crowds. Curiously, while the gladiators were uniformly white, the majority of the boisterous spectators were black. The local residents cheered unabashedly for their team, even though they could never have entertained the hope of representing it. They simply viewed the cricket club as an important village institution which represented them.34 Sociologists might be tempted to dismiss such behaviour as just another example of the Blacks meekly accepting the leadership of their traditional white masters. But, in fact, Barbadian cricket teams, whatever their class or their colour, have always been seen by the populace as representatives of their particular district. The Empire Cricket Club, for instance, drew vocal support from most of the denizens of the Bank Hall, Bush Hall and Eagle Hall areas in St Michael; Spartan spoke for the vast majority of the inhabitants of Constitution Hill, Crumpton Street, Hindsbury and Martindales Roads and Roebuck Street (also in St Michael); while the more recent rural club, St Catherines, has been idolized by the parishioners of St Philip from the time of its birth, and Maple, in like fashion, has always upheld the honour of St James.35

On certain fundamentals, consequently, there was obvious consensus among all classes and colours. Not only was cricket the best of all kinetic activities but it taught invaluable lessons about ethics and justice. Its values transcended race and class, but this did not mean that it could remove racial, social or economic barriers. If Barbadian Whites played cricket to signify their gentility, the Blacks did so to demonstrate their equality with their social superiors. The supreme irony then was the ability of a deeply divided society to unite on the cricket field for the singular purpose of proving its moral superiority over all others while, at the same time, tenaciously adhering to oldfashioned snobberies beyond the boundary. This ability to play cricket purposefully and to dominate Caribbean cricket virtually from the inception of intercolonial competition in 1865 had much to do with the forging of a Barbadian sense of nationalism even before the coming of Independence. Cricket gave to Barbados an identity and a sense of pride and purpose which nothing else could ever have done.36

It was this driving sense of nationalism which ultimately persuaded the establishment to revolutionize the administration of Barbadian cricket during the Age of Independence. Black scholarathletes, of whom Sir Grantley Adams is a classic example, finally denounced the bulk of Victorian orthodoxies. Adams, who had won a Barbados Scholarship in 1917, established an enviable reputation as a criminal lawyer before leading the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) to triumph in the field of politics. He had himself been a fine wicket-keeper/batsman for Harrison College and Spartan in his youth good enough to have played for Barbados against British Guiana in 1925. He clearly understood the close but complex linkages between cricket, education, law, and politics and left a substantial impact on them all. He played a notable role in the emergence of ministerial government in 1954 after having led a successful revolt against the oligarchical electoral system that had traditionally denied the franchise to the vast majority of Barbadian Blacks. The result was that a legislature, which had previously been predominantly white, suddenly became predominantly black after 1953. This permitted the BLP to mastermind a number of social changes. Perhaps the most important of these was the passage of AntiDiscrimination Laws in 1957 effectively destroying all the old vestiges of segregation.37 All the white clubs have therefore disappeared and even such powerful institutions as Pickwick and Wanderers have gradually become integrated. A thorough overhaul of the old and unfair fiscal machinery also forced the plantocracy at long last to pay its proper share of taxes and the new social democratic government was able to find additional funds for extensive public works, improved public health and the erection of more schools and colleges.38

The successful political careers of black men like Sir Grantley Adams and Errol Walton Barrow were made possible by the spectacular rise of a black bourgeoisie in Barbados quite steadily after World War I. Cricket and education had conspired to give this class a considerable measure of respect. Earning School Certificates and Higher Certificates in the expanding secondary grammar schools had opened doors for its members in the teaching and civil services. Some of them, like Clennell Wickham, had succeeded as influential journalists. Others had proceeded to the United Kingdom to study law and medicine. Its rise is reflected, perhaps most graphically, in two developments: the spectacular explosion of Friendly Societies, thanks in large measure to the infusion of Panama dollars;39 and the rapid expansion of the student population at the three major secondary schools, Combermere, Harrison and the Lodge, between 1920 and 1950. During these thirty years, Combermere's numbers increased from 234 to approximately 550;40 the roll at Harrison College rose from 208 to 575;41 and the Lodge student roll moved from about 90 to 312.42 That is to say, these schools which had catered to just over 500 pupils altogether in 1920 now had to cope with more than 1400. Moreover, smaller academic institutions, such as Alleyne, Coleridge, Foundation and Parry, had expanded very rapidly in the meantime and the Modern High School, a private academy run by Louis Lynch, was a vibrant concern by 1950. The Girls' secondary schools had meanwhile grown enormously too. It was a remarkable black upsurge that caused the vast bulk of this expansion.

By the mid-century, then, the black bourgeoisie was ready to assume the leadership of Barbadian life and culture. It rose to prominence in politics, putting the white element to flight and crushing the Progressive Conservative Party by itself supporting two Labour parties. When the younger social democrats revolted against the leadership of Grantley Adams in the mid1950s, this spelt doom for the party on the extreme right. The Democratic Labour Party (DLP), led by Barrow, cornered the political leftofcentre and became almost at once the BLP's leading opposition. Its popularity grew so rapidly, indeed, that it was able to win three consecutive general elections and remain in power from 1961 to 1976. It was Barrow (and not Adams) who thus led Barbados to Independence in 1966 and it was he who introduced the principle of free secondary and university education for the brightest children.43 It was the Barrow government, too, which seriously addressed the matter of gender imbalance and finally removed the sexist differential between male and female salary scales. This enlightened programme, almost inevitably, allowed the Blacks to assert their mastery over such vital fields as education, law, medicine, religion and sport.

In the Age of Independence, many old systems died. Blacks assumed positions as principals of all the leading schools and colleges; they were promoted to positions of authority in the church, the courts and the services; and they naturally also assumed command of cricket, then universally regarded as the national game. The idea that intellect and physicality were in close correspondence led steadily to the notion that Blacks had as much right to lead as Whites. Hence, in cricket and other sports, the gradual abandonment of the principle of white captaincy. John Goddard and Denis Atkinson were thus the last of the old white cricket captains. Everton Weekes was promoted to the position in 1959 and ever since then Barbados has been led by such able black captains as Carlisle Best, Courtney Browne, Desmond Haynes, Roland Holder, David Holford, Gary Sobers, and Philo Wallace.44 The BCA, too, previously managed largely by white administrators, has found itself being led in recent years by such black presidents as Tony Marshall and Cameron Smith. A long succession of active black vicepresidents, like Charles Alleyne, Patrick Lashley and Keith Walcott, have also rendered yeoman service to the BCA.45

The significance of cricket in the discussion of racial aptitudes is most crucial, for it is impossible to argue that it is a sport based mainly on the display of wonderful physical skills like strength of arm and speed of foot. Cricket is a complex exercise, demanding rather more than robust physique. A bowler's strength will avail him little if he fails to use his head; and no batsman can hope to succeed on sheer brawn. It has to be admitted, of course, that fast bowlers (like Curtley Ambrose who is mentioned briefly by Hoberman) must be physically powerful and in excellent shape to perform well at the highest level. It is hard work to propel a cricket ball at 90 miles per hour for delivery after delivery in the humid conditions which so often prevail in summer. But it is more necessary for a bowler to be accurate than to be fast, and he has to know how to manipulate the seam in order to persuade the ball to swerve in the air and to break appreciably after hitting the turf. Proper length and line are vital. A short-pitched delivery (or an over-pitched one), whatever its velocity, is a gift to the batsman at the international level. Bowlers have to know where to pitch their deliveries at particular opponents in order to achieve the optimum results. This requires careful study and assiduous practice. In short, it is as much an intellectual as a physical exercise. The same is even more true in the case of batting. Strength can permit a batsman to strike the ball violently, but he also has to place his strokes expertly beyond the reach of the fieldsmen; to wait patiently for the loose deliveries from which runs can be safely gleaned; and to judge properly the number of runs that can be taken from both his strokes and his partner's so that neither of them will be `run out'. Sometimes, too, the position of a match requires defensive play and the batsman has to concentrate on survival rather than conquest. Again, as with bowling, thinking is necessary; and, in fact, at the international level, temperament is often as important as technique.

And yet, incredibly, some English commentators (in white American fashion) have regarded the phenomenal rise of West Indian cricket after 1960 as the direct response to years of deprivation. When the West Indians became the most clinically professional team in world cricket, several English analysts concluded that it was the abject poverty in their homes which drove their fast bowlers in particular to display such unusual verve and ferocity. A well-known journalist, for instance, once produced Calypso Cricket, a famous documentary, in which all the terrors of short-pitched fast bowling were stressed and the strong impression was left that the West Indians had somehow destroyed the spirit, if not the letter, of this gentlemanly sport. The film itself, however, was freely and joyfully used by West Indian coaches as an excellent demonstration of controlled and intelligent pace bowling supported by brilliant catching behind the stumps and in the close positions (slips, short legs, and gully). The West Indian pundits were quick to emphasize the basic points which sensational journalism had overlooked: superb fast bowling produced by such great players as Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Malcohn Marshall and Andy Roberts required constant practice, hard physical labour and no small measure of cricket acumen.46

Cricket's obvious linking of eye, hand, foot, brain and heart has not been lost on Caribbean intellectuals. The famous Trinidadian philosopher, historian, novelist and political activist, C.L.R. James, always subscribed to the view that cricket provided one of the clearest reflections of a community's culture and circumstance. He tried, for example, to explain the fluctuations in England's cricket fortunes during the twentieth century by examining the shifting context in which English cricket was played. If the reign of Edward VII witnessed the Golden Age of English cricket, this was really because England felt the need to respond aggressively to the challenges in industry, finance and commerce which were then being offered by upstart industrializing nations like Germany, Japan, and the United States. This spirit of assertiveness manifested itself in the flamboyance of Edwardian batsmanship. In like manner, according to James, the stolidity of England's batsmen ever since the First Great War has reflected the old empire's quest for security and defence.47

James dealt similarly with the emergence of such great West Indian stars as George Challenor, George Headley, Frank Worrell and Garfield Sobers. He saw them all as products of their time and place. It did not matter that Challenor was white and the others were black. James did not think in racial terms.48 Professor Hilary Beckles, another outstanding West Indian scholar, also sees cricket as a window through which to peer into the soul of his native community. The brilliance of Gary Sobers (195274) was thus, in his view, a reflection of Barbadian dynamism in one age and the dearth of creative batsmanship in the period that followed (197590) was an equally clear indication of a `crisis of social culture'.49 There are obvious pitfalls, of course, in this kind of analysis. If the flowering of Sobers's genius was indicative of a Black renaissance which saw the rise of such remarkable leaders as Sir Grantley Adams, Norman Manley and Dr Eric Williams in the Age of Independence, how can we now explain the dominance of West Indian teams during the Age of Lloyd (1975-85) that followed? At the very time when the West Indies were forging their incredible record of 29 unbeaten Test series involving 115 international contests over a period of fifteen years (198095),50 the entire Caribbean basin was bedevilled by a variety of economic and social problems almost defiant of solution. Beckles and James, nevertheless, have much of value to add to the discussion of sporting aptitudes by pointing to the impact of the sociocultural, political and economic conditions that can definitely affect athletic performance.

Cricket offers another kind of challenge to the racial biologists in that it is not a sport in which particular disciplines are dominated by certain races. If geography, climate and other conditions combine to persuade the majority of Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans to bowl slow rather than fast, they can still point with pride to outstanding exceptions, such as Wasim Akram (311), Kapil Dev (434), Imran Khan (362) and Waqar Younis (227) who have already combined to take more than 1,300 wickets in Test cricket between them.51 The West Indies have produced a galaxy of phenomenally fast bowlers in recent years, but this is as much the result of their geography as of their biology. The pitches in the Caribbean have traditionally offered too little encouragement to the slower bowlers. Still, Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine, two West Indian spin bowlers of unusual quality, mesmerized a host of international batsmen during the 1950s and between them claimed 297 Test wickets in 79 international matches.52 Similarly, English climatic conditions have always favoured the mediumpace bowlers who can make the ball move tantalisingly in the air before it pitches, and it is not therefore surprising that the majority of the counties depend on this kind of bowler. Even so, England has been known to produce such formidable speedsters as Harold Larwood, Brian Statham, Freddie Trueman and Frank Tyson. All the Testplaying nations, too, have boasted great batsmen at one time and another. No race or country has established any particular monopoly here. In fact, the top five run-scorers in international cricket thus far include Alan Border (white Australian with 11,174), Sunil Gavaskar (brown Indian with 10,122), Graham Gooch (white Englishman with 8,900), Javed Miandad (brown Pakistani with 8,832), and Vivian Richards (black West Indian with 8,540).53 If the Caribbean teams have tended to perform rather better than their manpower or material resources would seem to warrant, this is really because of the enormous importance the British West Indians have traditionally attached to cricket as an index of their gentility.54

In recent years, too, Caribbean cricketers have found profitable outlets for their skills. This has encouraged many West Indian youngsters to aim at contracts in Britain, Europe and South Africa. Almost as soon as the residence requirements for players were waived by the English counties in 1968, English county cricket became swamped by a tremendous influx of West Indian stars. Hampshire alone included no fewer than four Barbadians on its county roster in 1971.55 This does not tell the scientist much about West Indian biology. After all, Browns (Alvin Kallicharran and Rohan Kanhai of Guyana) as well as Blacks (Gordon Greenidge, Vivian Richards and others) have performed extremely well on the county circuit. This West Indian exodus has been more directly related to the absence of occupational opportunities at home. The islands are densely populated, by European standards, and there is almost always a surplus of labour and skills.

It is thus crystal clear that the Barbadian experience is not altogether unique. There are too many Caribbean similarities. That this is so should surprise nobody with any understanding of Caribbean sociology. During the colonial period, Barbados (with its superior education system) supplied the other West Indian territories with a significant number of their teachers, civil servants and priests who had been trained at Codrington College, Combermere, Harrison and the Lodge. Several generations of Antiguans, Dominicans, Grenadians, Trinidadians and Vincentians have consequently been taught by Barbadians. And even as late as the 1960s, a Barbadian scholarathlete like Edward H.C. Griffith could be observed spreading the gospel of cricket and the classics in Jamaica. The majority of his 25 firstclass matches were played for Jamaica, whereas he represented Barbados only twice.56 The Barbadian influence was enormous, even though Barbados itself was physically one of the smallest of the islands. A long list of Barbadian educators encouraged their black students, especially in the socalled smaller islands, to aim at careers in such fields as engineering, law, and medicine.

It would have been impossible therefore for athletes, criminals and entertainers to have become the sole role models for West Indian Blacks. All West Indians, in fact, have taken enormous pride in the accomplishments of such famous black individuals as Sir Grantley Adams (law and politics), Sir George Alleyne (medicine), Dame Ruth Nita Barrow (public health and diplomacy), Marcus Garvey (political activism), John Hearne (literature), Errol Hill (drama), C.L.R. James (philosophy and history), Sir Arthur Lewis (economics), Michael Manley (politics and literature), Norman Manley (law and politics), Claude McKay (poetry), Sir Frederick Phillips (law and diplomacy), Leslie Robinson (mathematics), Andrew Salkey (literature), Derek Walcott (literature), and Dr Eric Williams (history and politics). Each Caribbean territory, in fact, has established its own firmament of heroic black (and brown) stars.

A racial biologist like Rushton would be totally confused by the realities in the Caribbean. Not only would he discover a superabundance of black and brown brains throughout this archipelago, he would be faced with an even greater dilemma when confining himself to purely athletic aptitudes: why is it that Barbadian Blacks generally play better cricket than their Jamaican counterparts? How would Rushton explain in biological terms the fact that Barbados (with its quarter of a million inhabitants) has won the territorial championship no fewer than 15 times since 1966 (when regular annual competition was inaugurated), while Jamaica (with a population of roughly two and half million) has done so only four times.57 This, of course, is defiant of biological explanation. Nor should we expect to find a biological solution when marvelling at Jamaica's exceptional performance in track and field. Jamaica has consistently outperformed Canada (with a population ten times as large) in the majority of athletic disciplines. Jamaica has also earned perhaps more world and Olympic track and field medals per capita than any other nation, including even the United States. The great Jamaican sprinter, Merlene Ottey, has accumulated, by almost every one's latest count, almost 40 important medals by herself far more, incidentally, than all of the Barbadians combined. To anyone who can think clearly, the explanation for these phenomena must be sought in anthropology, economics, geography, history, psychology and sociology rather than in biology and genetics.

John Hoberman, then, could have strengthened his position immeasurably by informing AfricanAmericans that other communities have successfully discarded the imaginary link between physical prowess and mental deformity. Some former colonial societies have succeeded extremely well here by emphasizing the value of education, by arguing that athletic triumphs depend to a large extent upon mental acuity, and by promoting their black, brown and yellow heroes and heroines in all disciplines. It cannot be disputed that Barbadian cricketers continue to be lionized by a society still enthralled by the cult of cricket, but the Barbadians (committed as they have traditionally been to the competing cult of education) have never lost their respect for intellectual genius. There is, in the final analysis, nothing wrong with the sports fixation itself so long as it leaves enough room for other constructive addictions.

Notes

1 Darwin's Athletes: How Sport has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. This article is a revised version of a paper presented to the symposium, `Sport Matters', sponsored by New York University in April 1998.

2 W. Augustus Low and Virgil A. Clift, eds. Encyclopedia of Black America (New York, 198 1), passim.

3 1979 Britannica Book of the Year, pp. 11415.

4 1993 Britannica Book of the Year, p. 42.

5 Jeffrey T. Sammons, `"Race" and Sport: A Critical, Historical Examination', Journal of Sport History (Fall 1994), Vol. 21, No. 3, pp.203-78.

6 See, e.g., Keith A.P. Sandiford, Clyde Leopold Walcott: His Record Inningsby-Innings (West Bridgford, 1996), p. 6; Keith A.P. Sandiford, John Douglas Claude Goddard: His Record InningsbyInnings (West Bridgford, forthcoming); and Barbados Cricket Association, 100 Years of Organised Cricket in Barbados 18921992 (Bridgetown, 1992), p. 77. Barbadian schoolboy cricketers like Roger Blackman, John Goddard (white) and Keith Walcott during the 1930s would certainly not have found Billy the Blackboy's 140 yards so mindboggling. It has also been brought to my attention that `Paddy' Winter, an Antiguan schoolboy, still obviously in his teens, once threw the cricket ball in excess of 138 yards. He eventually became a worldclass bodybuilder.

7 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1997, p. 338.

8 Ibid, p. 1346.

9 See, e.g., G.K. Lewis, The Growth of the Modern West Indies (London, 1968), p. 226.

10 Keith A.P. Sandiford, `Barbados Then, and Barbados Now', Banja: A Magazine of Barbadian Life & Culture (Issue No. 5, 1989/1990), p. 49-53. When this article was being researched in 1988, there were already seven people of colour among the BS&T directors.

11 Hilary McD. Beckles, A History of Barbados From Amerindian Settlement to Nation State (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 105.

12 Barbados, Education Commission Report 190709 (Bridgetown, 1909), p. 2-3. Even as early as 1875, the Report of the Mitchinson Commission included a reference (p. 4) to as many as 161 primary schools in the island.

13 1987 Britannica Book of the Year, p. 600.

14 Barbados Estimates 198687, iii, xxi, pp. 19. A study of the annual Barbados Reports in the period of Independence (1966 to the present) is most revealing. More than one fifth of the island's revenues has routinely been devoted to education year after year.

15 Keith A.P. Sandiford, `Education and the Barbadian Society', Banja: A Magazine of Barbadian Life & Culture (Issue No. 4, April 1989), pp. 4553.

16 1987 Britannica Book of the Year, pp. 77273. It has to be added, however, that the cost of American education is largely borne by state governments and private enterprise.

17 Barbados Estimates 198687, p. 9.

18 John Gilmore, `Episcopacy, Emancipation, and Evangelization', (Seminar Paper No. 6, 198384, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, 1984) pp. 2127.

19 The Island Scholarship provided the bright student (usually the second best each year) with free tuition and accommodation at Codrington College in St. John. This institution was (and still is) affiliated with Durham University in England and offered degrees in classics and divinity. The more prestigious Barbados Scholarship took the brightest student each year to a British university to pursue (at the Barbados government's expense) any degree in the discipline of his or her choice. Many Barbados scholars studied law or medicine.

20 Keith A.P. Sandiford & Earle H. Newton, Combermere School and the Barbadian Society (Kingston, 1995), passim.

21 BCA, 100 Years, 109. Bruce Hamilton, Cricket in Barbados (Bridgetown, 1947) pp. 55-57. Harrisonian (December 1925), p. 35.

22 Keith A.P. Sandiford & Brian Stoddart, `The Elite Schools and Cricket in Barbados: A Study in Colonial Continuity', The International Journal of the History of Sport 4 (December 1987), pp. 33370.

23 Fabriciano A. Hoyos, The Quiet Revolutionary (London, 1984), pp. 823.

24 Lodge School Record (1958), 10. Lodge School Record (1962), p. 26.

25 Keith A.P. Sandiford, Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados: The Elite Schools 18651966 (Press University of the West Indies, forthcoming 1998), passim.

26 Trevor Marshall, `Race, Class and Cricket in Barbadian Society, 18001970', Manjak, 11 November 1973. Martin C. Ramsay, `A Critical Examination of Factors affecting the Formation of Major Cricket Clubs in Barbados', UWI undergraduate paper, Cave Hill, 1979. And, especially, Brian Stoddart, `Cricket and Colonialism in the English Speaking Caribbean to 1914: Towards a Cultural Analysis' in James A. Mangan, ed. Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad 1700-1914 (London, 1988), pp. 23157.

27 Empire Cricket Club, The Empire Club, 19141989 (Bridgetown, 1989), pp. 1620.

28 L. Walcott,'The Barbados Cricket League: Forty Years of Service', UWI undergraduate paper, Cave Hill, 1978.

29 Don Norville, `The Barbados Cricket League', in BCA, 100 Years, pp. 2124.

30 `Hitler', with whom I had practised regularly in the Combermere School nets during the early 1950s, raised this issue during the question period after I had delivered the inaugural address in the Sir Garfield Sobers Cricket Lecture Series in February 1994 at Queen's Park in Bridgetown, Barbados.

31 See the trilogy on `Sons in the Sun' by Keith A.P. Sandiford which appeared in 1995/96 in Cricket Lore. See also Keith A.P. Sandiford, `The Spartan Cricket Club, 1893-1993', The Journal of the Cricket Society (Autumn 1993), Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 436.

32 See, e.g., David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies (London, 1972).

33 See, e.g., Barbados Globe, 27 March 1899 and 27 December 1899.

34 On the phenomenon of Barbadian cricket, see Keith A.P. Sandiford, `Cricket and the Barbadian Society', Canadian Journal of History 21 (December 1986), pp. 35370; and Brian Stoddart, `Cricket, Social Formation and Cultural Continuity in Barbados: a Preliminary Ethnohistory', Journal of Sport History 14 (Winter 1987), p. 31740.

35 BCA, 100 Years, p. 44.

36 Keith A.P. Sandiford, `Cricket and the Growth of Barbadian Nationalism Before Independence (1966) and Since', (forthcoming in Sporting Heritage).

37 See `AntiDiscrimination Laws in Barbados', anonymous and undated pamphlet in the Barbados National Archives,

38 Fabriciano A. Hoyos, Grantley Adams and the Social Revolution (London, 1974).

39 Beckles, History of Barbados, p. 151. Many Barbadians went off to work on the construction of the Panama Canal and sent their money back home to purchase small lots of land and to provide their children with secondary education. Beckles and others estimate that some £546,000 found its way into Barbados by way of remittances from Panama between 1906 and 1920 (ibid, p. 145).

40 Combermere School Magazine (First Term, 191920), p. 12 and Combermerian (1949-1950), p. 11.

41 Harrisonian (December 1920), p. 1 and Harrisonian (January 1951), p. 53.

42 Lodge School Record (December 1920), 3; and Lodge School Record (May 1949-December 1950), p. 7.

43 Peter Morgan, The Life and Times of Errol Barrow (Bridgetown, 1994).

44 Sandiford, `Cricket and the Barbadian Society', p. 364.

45 BCA, Report & Statement of Accounts, 1st April 1995 to 31st March 1996 (Bridgetown, 1996), pp. 7778.

46 Ian Wooldridge, Calypso Cricket (London, 1985).

47 Anna Grimshaw, ed. Cricket (London, 1988): A collection of essays written over the years by C.L.R. James.

48 C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (Sportsmans Book Club, 1964), passim.

49 Hilary McD. Beckles, `Barbados Cricket and the Crisis of Social Culture', in BCA, 100 Years, pp. 501.

50 Tony Cozier, `The Wonder Years', Red Stripe Caribbean Cricket Quarterly (July/ September 1995), pp. 89. Clive Hubert Lloyd of Guyana led the team in 74 Tests during 197485 and achieved more victories (36) than any other captain in cricket's history. His teams suffered only 12 losses and had the upper hand in most of their 26 drawn Tests.

51 Wisden's Cricketers'Almanack 1998, p. 239. As Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis are still active, this number will certainly increase. It is also of no little significance that Kapil Dev's haul of 434 Test wickets is the current world record, surpassing by three the previous mark that the white Richard Hadlee of New Zealand had set.

52 Ibid, p. 238.

53 Ibid, pp. 22528.

54 Keith A.P. Sandiford, `Cricket in the West Indies: The Rocky Road to Test Match Status', in Hilary McD. Beckles, ed. A Spirit of Dominance: Cricket and Nationalism in the West Indies (Press University of the West Indies, 1998), pp. 1644.

55 Wisden Cricketers'Almanack 1972, p. 434.

56 Philip Thorn, Barbados Cricketers 18651990 (West Bridgford, 1991), p. 12, 25.

57 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1998, p. 1252.