COMMENTARY: Leg Before Wicket

Cricket is a game of grace; civility and integrity exalted. Honor most profound resonated in the cricket matches of my youth.

Picture the bucolic setting. Dominica’s Botanic Gardens; a green lawn, nicely mowed by the gardeners dutifully at their tasks. The field surrounded by stout mahogany, cedar and palms gathered from the furthest reaches of the British Empire and made to garland the oval of green lawn atop which the cricketers in dazzling whites crouch in expectation of a catch. Above their heads a powder blue sky, with hummingbirds flitting by. To the East an abrupt hill; the so called Morne guarded by a rusted cannon in its emplacement and a towering white cross looking over the city of Roseau. To the north, the lush Roseau Valley with rows of lime groves of the L. Rose Company, move toward the uplands – bisected by a froth embroidered Roseau River. Behind me, to the West, is the venerable Dominica Grammar School which birthed our cricketing greats such as Irving and Grayson Shillingford, Norbert Phillip and Lockhart Sebastian. On the West Indies wide vista, the cricketing kings who preside are Sir Garfield Sobers, Rohan Kanhai and the up and coming Clive Lloyd.

It is the early 1970’s and Dominica is playing Grenada for the Windward Islands Cup or some such. Radio Dominica is on and St Havis Shillingford is the commentator this day; his impeccable diction resonating from the transistor radio of a gentleman near me. He is at the game; can see the bowler as he gathers speed before bowling a fast one; but he must still listen to St. Havis Shillingford, lest he misses the majesty of the moment.

In the background, near the white painted broadcast booth one spots V-8, a Roseau street character of yore; he staggers under the burdens of the cask rum he has imbibed that morning. He shouts loudly; loud enough to have his voice enter the broadcast booth and sidestep St. Havis’ perfect English, with an island slant. Loud enough so it is heard across the island by the farmer leaning, expectantly, on his fork stuck in the freshly turned soil. Loud enough so that for weeks after the match he will accost people going about their business in Roseau and ask: you did hear me nuh? I was on radio, oui!

And St Havis intones, “Grayson Shillingford turns slowly from his running spot. He gazes across the field. He rubs the ball against his trousers, slowly; a faint red spot to it. Clem John at the long on boundary; Phillip at Silly mid off. The crowd has grown this afternoon. It is a colorful crowd this afternoon at the Botanic Gardens. Well behaved; we see some of the ladies with their umbrellas aloft. Now Grayson Shillingford starts off at a fast clip – and delivers. The Grenadian fumbles forward. His pad blocking the ball.” I look at the game and listen to the blaring radio at the same time.

“Howzat umpire?” it is a truncation of “How is that umpire? Shillingford and the entire Dominican field have hands in the air. The crowd roars; I am on tip toe shouting too: Howzat umpire??? This is a call to honor the game. This is a call to both umpire and batsman to do honor to the integrity driven chalice of cricket from which we must all drink where we are to be a respectable people living decent lives; lives where we can trust our neighbors enough to leave our windows wide open all day and night and think nothing of it. Where a batsman places his leg in such way as to block the three stumps which would otherwise be scattered by that ball, he has committed an offense against the game; it is called Leg Before Wicket: LBW. And for that, he must depart the crease at which he presides and walk back to the pavilion – a bit shamed by having played the game wrong.

The more honest players do not wait for the umpire or the rebuke of the crowd. The players who value honor, and who consider that all that is worthwhile in life resides in trust, usually pull at their gloves and begin to make their way to the players pavilion before the umpire makes that fatal gesture with the right hand upright and right fore finger upward.

And, at this moment, the Grenadian keeps the pact with a lifestyle that was more predictable for gentility and honor among leaders and led on the island. He walks. He does not wait on judgement from the umpire or St Havis; he does not wait for the crowd to heap shame on misconduct. He knows better; he preserves the sanctity of the sport; and such grace, repeated and ennobled by such repetition percolated into the soil and soul of the society and keeps it wholesome. LBW.

Cricket. And the game of life and government among humankind rendered worthwhile by the values innate to that game: cricket, lovely cricket, where have thou gone?