Hitting for Six – Irving Andre’s Towering Tribute to Dominican Cricket History

[The Dominica Botanic Gardens] was a verdant amphitheater in which the leading lights of colonial society engaged the genteel and gentlemanly games of cricket ..In May and June when the regional [cricket] tournaments took place the Flamboyant, Golden Shower, Queen’s Flower and Poui Poui trees exploded in a kaleidoscope of flowers thereby adding a natural exuberance to the magnificent surroundings…”

Such are the lyrical heights to which Irving Andre soars, as he metaphorically hits the ball for six in his recall of Dominica’s cricket history.  Andre, whose father played the games at the Dominica Grammar School, is impelled in this work by the time within which he grew up on Dominica.  The 1960s and early 1970s was a time of cricket glory come; an era when the  exploits of cricketers such as Irving and Grayson Shillingford, Clem John, Norbert Phillip, and Lockhart Sebastien resounded across the length and breadth of the thickly wooded island.

It was a time when I saw people dashing out their front doors in Roseau, some half dressed, transistor radios at the ear, hurrying along to watch the majestic game at the Botanic Gardens. When cricket commentators such as a Jeff Charles or Reginald St. Havis Shillingford would announce that one of our cricket heroes had sent a ball thrashing through the trees of the Gardens for a six, a torrent of voices – rising to a crescendo – would burst forth from modest Roseau homes. And those who had been calmly walking toward the Gardens would quicken their step, or even break into a gallop, afraid the match would end before they arrived.

As children we would look on with awe at the field craft wizardry of our boys; their white cricket ware glimmering against, the greenery of the stately Botanic Gardens. Dominica’s Botanic Gardens, a veritable laboratory of plants chosen from across the British Empire, was where the game of cricket was played in our youth. Founded in 1892,  the Botanic Gardens was designed by its curator Joseph Jones of the Royal Gardens at Kew, and was considered by travel writers in its heyday to be one of the most magnificent little botanic gardens in the world.

It is in tribute to that glorious history that, on May 23, 2015 Dr. Irving W. Andre will launch A Century of Dominican Cricket (Pont Casse Press, 2015). The 319 page book is riveting treasure trove of Dominican and West Indian cricket history revealed. With seventy rare photographs, this may well be the best book on cricket in recent history. In many respects cricket was the incubator of West Indian national spirit and sense of accomplishment as a people and Andre does not disappoint in telling the story.  He skillfully traces the evolution of the game from one dominated by the West Indian planter and business elite, to its capture by the common man who hoisted the West Indies cricket team atop a pedestal of excellence which made it – arguably – the best in the world in the mid to late 20th Century.

Andre’s work is not some dry recitation of cricket scores. Rather it is an engrossing tale of players from Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean Sea, who soar to the top of the cricket game in local matches, against visiting teams, at the level of English County cricket and in test cricket – the apex of the game.

Andre resurrects for posterity great talents like Merrill Anthony whose skill as a fast bowler decimated many a wicket.  Merrill sadly is never picked for the West Indies team, even where he is held in high regard by those who faced him, up down and the cricket loving West Indian islands. Merrill was born in 1904 at Newtown and was a tin smith. He is a black man at a time when his color is held in low esteem by the wilting, yet still potent, strictures of the colonial society’s class and race based prejudices. To heap insult upon injury Merrill is jailed for two years at hard labour for throwing stones at police in the 1938 carnival, most likely framed.  It was alleged that he was part of the Newtown ban mauvais – a rowdy carnival band given to violent conduct. Until Andre’s work few would have heard of him. No more.

We are also introduced to Alec Reid, arguably the best West Indian wicket keeper of the mid century.  Shunned by the anti-small island bias of selectors in Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados, Reid was denied a place on the West Indies team despite several stunning performances. In 1955 Australian skipper Neil Harvey said of Reid, “..he is the best wicket keeper I have come across in the West Indies.” And none other than the legendary West Indian cricketer, and the first black man to sit the House of Lords, Lord Learie Constantine, Baron of Maraval in Trinidad and Nelson in the County Palatine of Lancaster, said “ The only thing that can prevent Reid from going to England [i.e. on the West Indian team] is if a wicket keeper should rise like a meteor from the heavens.” Heartbroken at not being selected Reid would waste away in the English city of Bradford to which he had migrated, withered by his ingestion of Scotch Whiskey in which he sought to drown his sorrows. His cricketing glory caught within the ossified bowels of bias by the West Indian cricket team selectors, Reid’s is a tragic tale.

But this sparkling work rises above the somber moment, to regale us with the likes of superb umpires like Phillip Alleyne and Billy Doctrove who are knightly stewards of the game; Doctrove rising to be one of the best cricket umpires in the world.  In later years Andre outlines the contributions to the game of the new generation of 21^st Century cricket notables such as Roy Marshall, Liam Sebastien, Adam Sanford and Shane Shillingford.  Now, we also have women cricketers of note such as Doris Francis and Pearl Etienne. Andre reminds us that there is promise yet in Dominica’s cricket line up, and that such new blood can once again can fill the veins of our waning fortunes in the game. He is insightful where he observes that Dominica society has been held together by the unifying forces of the four “Cs”: Cricket, Carnival, Calypso and Church.

Andre’s unique contribution to cricket history here is that it is seen for the first time from the perspective of Dominica and the smaller Leeward and Windward islands which gird the Caribbean Sea. As he frankly tells it, the role of the smaller islands in West Indian cricket have often been obscured by the same big versus small island prejudices which doomed the British West Indian Federation of 1957-1962. A Century of Dominican Cricket is a superb rendition of sporting history, and its intersection with the evolution of a society from colony to independent nation-state. In such an analysis, Andre’s work is in the class of Trinidadian author CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary whose classic study of cricket can find few parallels.  Surely it belongs on the bookshelves of all students of West Indian history or development studies. Here, Andre has done us justice, by resurrecting the stories of some real heroes of our native land. In so doing he has redeemed an entire nation.