by Henry Fraser

With gay men and great

It is pleasant to meet

When the Club of St George's may call:

For true game is there

All honest and fair;

'Tis the game of the Bat and the Ball.

– Toast of the St George's Cricket Club of Philadelphia, 1886, when gay meant cheerful!

PROFESSOR HILARY BECKLES has done it again. The superb A Nation Imagined – First West Indies Test Team: The 1928 Tour by Hilary Beckles brought to our attention in vivid detail and colourful media
the little-remembered first West Indies Test tour of England. His latest cricket history The First West Indies Cricket Tour: Canada and the United States in 1886 is a splendid little book, bringing
to light a completely forgotten epic in West Indian (and North American) cricket history.

In A Nation Imagined, published in 2003 by Ian Randle Publishers and the Centre for Cricket Research of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill Campus, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our accession to test cricket, Professor Beckles intersperses his incisive commentary with the newspaper reports of the day, Press photos, cartoons, scorecards and facsimile reprints of newspaper clippings.

The result is a richly textured book, making this fascinating event in our cricketing history live for us in an even more fascinating and extraordinary way.

A delightful diary

The First West Indies Cricket Tour is an entirely different kind of affair. Professor Beckles, with the extraordinary good fortune that can only come to what might be described as an "archaeological bibliophile", managed to unearth the diary or "memory" of L.R. Fyfe, captain of the West Indies team that toured Canada and the United States of America in 1886.

He has written a scholarly introduction to the diary, setting the bold ambition of these pioneers in the historical context of a decayingand economically desperate sugar plantation economy of the second half of the nineteenth century.

In the first part of the book, Professor Beckles describes the socio-economic developments (or lack of development) in the Caribbean, resulting from the post emancipation changes in the sugar industry, complicated by the British Government's removal of preferential treatment for sugar from the colonies.

Not unlike the challenges of "Free Trade" and "Globalisation" we face today, which is making the rich nations, especially the United States, rapidly richer, and the poor nations progressively poorer (politically acceptable neo-colonisation), the Caribbean colonies, then, were increasingly desperate for economic solutions.

The tour, therefore, had many objectives: cricket and commerce, as Professor Beckles points out "went bat and glove; this much was understood and appreciated. The outcome of matches, important in themselves, were not the key determinants in relations between teams. The entire exercise had to be conducted with grace, shaped by hospitality and expressive of gentlemanly conduct. These values were considered endemic to both the culture of thegame and commercial ethics".

The tour was the brainchild of Guy Wyatt, captain of the Georgetown Cricket Club of Guyana, and the team was selected from the "Big Four", Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados, although eventually Trinidad sent no one, and the party consisted of seven Jamaicans, three Bajans and three Guyanese, captained by L.R. Fyfe of Jamaica.

The West Indians played six games in Canada, won four and lost only one; the other was a draw.
They clearly did magnificently. They did less well in the United States, playing in and around Philadelphia, the strong cricket centre of the country. They won two matches, lost four and drew one – not a terrible performance, but there was certainly some "crumbling"!

Reasons why we lost

The media varied in their sympathy and reporting. One journalist noted: "The islanders are not accustomed to American wickets, their own being harder, rougher and faster. Again, they are under too great a strain. They play cricket day after day, and generally spend their evening in enjoying the hospitality of their hosts. These are the principal reasons why they have failed to do themselves justice."

(Anything in those comments sound familiar?)

On the lighter side, the style of the diary is delightful. Some amusing and archaic expressions are used, and some "creative" descriptions that might inspire even our own most inventive and startling local sports commentators – from the prosaic ("he gave a hard catch to mid-on which was not accepted") to the risqué ("one of his terrific smites came near removing the garters of a lady tennis player in a distant court")

An interesting passage (on Page 70) is: "The century was passed and 118 was posted when Wilson caught Kerr at 'silly point', as the Philadelphians call forward point close in." So even though we no longer take on the Americans on a regular basis, think of them every time you hear of a fielder placed at "silly point" –
it's an Americanism!

I strongly recommend both of these splendid books for any cricket fan whose interest extends beyond
the mere satisfaction of winning.

Professor Fraser is Dean of the School of Clinical Medicine and Research, UWI