SJS
Hall of Fame Member
The pertinent one here is no West Indians in cricket. You did have them till less than ten years ago you know. I think this has to do with the West Indians (the native West Indians) fast reducing interest in the game of cricket.BoyBrumby said:I would say that is unquestionably true.
It is interesting to compare the paths of the children & grandchildren of West Indian & sub-continent immigrants to the UK in sporting terms. Both groups arrived at roughly the same time (late 40s/early 50s-late 60s/early 70s) but their sporting progress has followed markedly different routes.
To look at the two teams who represented England yesterday in our Football (soccer) team we had Wes Brown, Ashley Cole, Jermaine Jenas, Kieron Dyer & Shaun Wright-Phillips, all of West Indian ancestry; in our cricket team we had Vikram Solanki & Kabir Ali, both of sub-continental extraction. No Asian Englishmen in our Football team & no black Englishmen in our cricket team. As their parents & grandparents originated from areas where cricket is king this (to me) is interesting.
Whether it speaks of more integration by the West Indian communities or stronger familial bonds in the Asian community I don’t know! Certainly black English cricketers seem to be altogether rarer than only a decade ago.
I was reading an article the other day by Peter Roebuck I think, where he linked the West Indies hey days with the times when you could walk onto any beach in the carrebean and see these young black boys with the most rudimentary of implements, aping the great west indian cricket stars. The passion for the game has been dying in the Carrebean for some time and the same reflected in the fortunes of the Windies team. I am sure it is also reflected in the young West Indians living away from home.
The heroes are still going to come from the homeland even for the second and third generations and I think the British West Indian youngsters are not finding enough heroes amongst the West indian cricketers whom they would like to emulate.