Summer Sports - Cricket
Tom James reports from the home of West Indian cricket in the UK, where he finds the club chairman, Harwood Williams, in philosophical mood, following the loss of important sponsorship
Caribbean calypso...
The signs are that this cricket square will deliver the kind of hard wickets that create the high bounce beloved of West Indians. And it’s fitting that it should, because the square in question is at the home of Caribbean cricket in Britain - Leeds.
T
I’m talking to the man who is striving to move this arm of the game into a new era of sponsorship and prosperity. But, it’s a tough challenge that faces Harwood Williams, chairman of Leeds Caribbean Cricket Club (LCCC). Four years in the post, he has seen
52 PC APRIL/MAY 2012
he heavy roller has completed its pre-season session - ironing out the ground undulations and upheavals of, what was, a mainly mild but uncommonly dry winter.
sponsorship at national level come and go, to leave Caribbean cricket struggling for the money it needs to enable it to advance, fund facility improvements and promote itself more powerfully. That said, the network of Caribbean
cricket clubs that stretches across Britain is a reflection of the strength and unity of West Indian communities. And Leeds was the first site, established in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II in a land desperate to rebuild the ravaged fabric of a nation. “West Indians played their part in the conflict,” says Harwood, “but, after the War, were left asking ‘What do we do now?’. The country wanted support from members of the Commonwealth to ‘build Britain’, as my mother would have said.”
Finding ready work as the country rose
from the ashes, those based here began to bring their families over to start life afresh in the Brave New World of the 1950s. ”Caribbean cricket clubs are to be found in most major towns and cities,” says Harwood, “from Sheffield and Manchester to Birmingham and Bristol. West Indians from different countries tended to settle in different parts of the country. In Leeds, they were mainly Jamaicans, whilst in Leicester, Antiguans, for example, but those from Barbados, Trinidad and St Kitts and Nevis also set up communities elsewhere. Cricket was the cohesive force that pulled the strands of Britain’s West Indian population together and, until as recently as two years ago, Caribbean clubs had
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