#new frame

In Beyond a Boundary, James drives home the point that cricket in the West Indies was far more than a game – it crossed “the boundary” into the hearts and minds and the cultural and political life of the mass of ordinary islanders. “The cricket field was a stage on which selected individuals played representative roles, which were charged with social significance,” he wrote. For the team of the 1980s, it was similarly symbolic. The mental atmosphere was the product of three decades of decolonisation, often through armed resistance, and continuing revolutionary wars in southern Africa. Liberation was also in the air in the Caribbean. Between 1960 and 1980 the number of independent island states grew from three to 16. Black pride found a defiant voice in Rastafarianism and the anthems of Bob Marley, who told the islanders: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds…”

My pretty has some new duds.