As many as five of the West Indies playing XI in the first Test match against India at St. John’s, Antigua, were of Indian origin. This is the culmination of a remarkable trend that began over 50 years back. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Dinesh Ramdhin, Dave Mohammed and Daren Ganga are keeping up a glorious tradition started by left-arm spinner Sonny Ramadhin in 1950.
Ramadhin with fellow-spinner Alf Valentine bowled the West Indies to their first series victory in England. He was also the first cricketer of Indian descent to represent the Caribbean islands.
Their ancestors had been shipped to the Caribbean from villages in India, mostly from Bihar and UP, by the British rulers as ‘indentured’ labourers. This was really slavery — which, by then, had been abolished — by another name. They were forced to work in the sugarcane fields of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago in oppressive conditions. Treated like second-class citizens at best, these Indians — who never forgot their roots back home — struggled their way to the top of society by sheer dint of hard work.
The most famous of their ilk is, of course, Nobel Prize winning novelist Sir Vidia — V.S. Naipaul from Trinidad while many others have risen to positions of eminence in politics, even leading their adopted countries. These include Cheddi Jagan (Guyana) and Basdeo Pandey (Trinidad and Tobago).
It was the first visit of an Indian cricket team to the West Indies in 1953 that electrified the Indian community and inspired many to take to cricket. The team, led by Vijay Hazare, surprised one and all by losing just one of the five Test matches.
{{/usCountry}}It was the first visit of an Indian cricket team to the West Indies in 1953 that electrified the Indian community and inspired many to take to cricket. The team, led by Vijay Hazare, surprised one and all by losing just one of the five Test matches.
{{/usCountry}}Batsmen Ivan Madray, Joe Solomon and Rohan Kanhai followed Ramadhin into the West Indian team and it was finally in 1973 that Kanhai became the first from his community to be appointed captain. He was followed five years later by Alvin Kallicharan. Before Brian Lara took over the captaincy for the third time last month, Chanderpaul was captain. Once Viv Richards assumed the captaincy from Clive Lloyd in 1985 he publicly stated that the West Indian team was a ‘symbol of the Afro-Caribbean people’. True to his word, not a single Indian could get a place in sides led by Sir Viv.
It is indeed an ironic twist of fate that if cricket is still alive in the West Indies today, it is largely due to the interest among the Indian community. The Afro-Caribbean people have developed other more lucrative interests that have lured them away from cricket and this is evident in the decline of the West Indies as a world cricket power over the last 10 years.
Now at the time of another series against the land of their forefathers, it is perhaps the right time to pay tribute to one of Indian diaspora’s greatest success stories.