Natricia Duncan (The Guardian) writes that, “as the Emancipation Cricket Festival is launched in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the 15-country bloc Caricom says it is ‘deeply concerned’ about the state of the sport.” Here are excerpts from “Caribbean looks to revive passion and pride for cricket – and for the region.” Read the full article at The Guardian.
[. . .] Earlier this month, St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) hosted the first-ever Emancipation Cricket Festival, which the culture and tourism minister, Carlos James, described as a reminder of the powerful link “between our emancipation, resistance, our Caribbean culture and the birth of Caribbean cricket”.
“Some folks ask, why are you linking cricket – which is a game of the English – to emancipation. How does it correlate? Well, it was a period where every Caribbean national was glued to their radios … their television sets, to follow these men who went out in the middle of the cricket pitch,” James said. By touring – and winning – that generation of sportsmen sent a powerful message, he said: “They were making a political statement that we are young Black men from small Caribbean islands – and we can dominate the world.”
James said that understanding the link between sport and politics – and reviving the collective passion for the game – could help turn the tide for today’s West Indies team, which has performed poorly in recent games.
St Vincent and the Grenadines’ prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, one of the region’s strongest voices for reparations from Europe for the genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement of African people, said the aim of the emancipation festival was to bring awareness to the region’s period of struggle and resistance.
“Cricket, a game brought to us … by the British colonists, became our own existential instrument to aid our quest for national liberation, liberty, equality, fairness and justice,” he said. “We absorbed this English sport, mastered it, transcended its limits, made it our own, redefined it – and took it beyond the boundaries.” He added that today, “cricketing culture” remained vital to the region.
But such is the state of Caribbean cricket that Caricom, the 15-country regional bloc, recently said that it was “deeply concerned … about all aspects of the current state of the game in the region”.
In a statement, Caricom said: “Cricket has, for decades, been a platform through which our small nations have collectively stood tall on the world stage. West Indies Cricket is very much a ‘public good’.” It added that “the [West Indies] team’s recent performance is a moment of reckoning for this cherished Caribbean institution”.
For full article, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/17/west-indies-cricket-emancipation-festival
Natricia Duncan (The Guardian) writes that, “as the Emancipation Cricket Festival is launched in St Vincent and the Grenadines, the 15-country bloc Caricom says it is ‘deeply concerned’ about the state of the sport.” Here are excerpts from “Caribbean looks to revive passion and pride for cricket – and for the region.” Read the full
