Once again the discussion on selecting national heroes has up. It’s a kind of national guessing game, with the traditional calls for Bob Marley, Louise Bennett-Coverley, Michael Manley, and even Roger Clarke, to be considered for honours.

I am not sure how Clarke’s name got mixed in this list. It may have been a follow-up to the euphoria that surrounded his unexpected and regrettable demise. Death tends to make a man’s deeds look larger than they are in life.

It must be the same sort of euphoria that has been following Usain Bolt around ever since his heroic deeds at the Olympics. Bolt’s name is the latest addition to the name-the-hero game. Personally, I believe that Bolt would be the last man alive who would want to be named a national hero at this time in his life. He has already been caught napping with the strain of the Order of Jamaica around his neck. He is finding out that ordinary citizen Bolt can romp about as much as he wants, but not the Bolt that has been invested.

Even politicians are allowed to romp around in that same manner, and at the same time score good political points. It is said that the difference between Jamaican politicians and American politicians is that, while scandals may rock your chances for making it to the White House, a good scandal or two in Jamaica, especially if it is mixed up with a sexual romantic carrying-on, does no harm to your election campaign.

Years ago a noted womaniser was running for a seat in the western part of Jamaica. His opponent, expecting to win votes by questioning the man’s character, berated him from the platform one night for keeping too many women. The next night, on the same platform and to the same crowd that had returned to hear the response, candidate B acknowledged that Candidate A was correct, “Yes, is true what him say, but me never know say him wife so chat chat.” Of course, he won his seat.

But back to the Order of National Hero. Readers may be familiar with my nomination for George Alphonso Headley to be made a national hero. I have no apology to make for bringing it up again. The truth is that in his time Headley was already a treasured national icon, the people’s hero, and one about whom songs and sonnets were written and published in the newspapers and sold as pamphlets on street corners and at public functions. In other words, he had already passed the people’s test.

Headley was a living legend. Crowds flocked to meet him whenever the West Indies team docked at Kingston’s No 3 pier, or at Bridgetown in Barbados, Port of Spain in Trinidad, or at Georgetown in Guyana.

He was an icon in his time who was loved, not just for his brilliance on the field, but because by his dignity, quiet demeanour, sportsmanship, discipline and application, they saw him as representing their struggles to gain a foothold in society on the basis of performance and commitment to excellence, rather than privilege or colour.

West Indians followed his batting around the world on the radio, or were kept updated by telegraph, or would hear his scores from the village spokesmen who would read the newspaper reports aloud each night in the village square.

We are in danger of this generation — and others to come — losing sight of Headley’s phenomenal contribution to the national psyche.

As a mere man-child of 19, he revolutionised the cricket establishment when he made his first double century in 1928 (211) in his first international series against a Lord Tennyson’s XI at Sabina Park.

The ‘Chocolate Baby’, as he was dubbed by the crowd, went on to make 176 in the first Test against England in Barbados in 1929, followed by two centuries of 114 and 112 in the third Test at British Guiana’s Bourda grounds.

But it isn’t just for his cricket that we should honour him. In achieving his phenomenal records, he opened the eyes of West Indians to opportunities and achievements hitherto only dreamed of, and at levels thought to be reserved for the wealthier class. As he scored century after century against the best of the English and Australian sides playing cricket at that time, he became known as the ‘Atlas’, because it was acknowledged that he carried the West Indies batting on his shoulders.

Headley represented the hopes and aspirations of thousands of his countrymen whose dreams of independence and nationhood were slowly being defined by his exploits and achievements.

It can be studied how the emergence of the West Indies as a Test-playing region in the late 1920s and 1930s coincided with the political and cultural movements that marked the early stirrings of independence across the British Caribbean.

For example, Headley’s centuries in his first two international series resonated well with Marcus Garvey’s call for dominion status (political independence) for Jamaica in 1929.

The political movement, on the one hand, and the advancement in cricket on the other, continued to grow in the 1930s with the Progressive League, spearheaded by W G McFarlane, Norman Manley and Richard Hart proposing national self-government for Jamaica in 1937, and Alexander Bustamante giving a voice to the Labour movement which swept Jamaica in 1938.

Fittingly, it was an epochal moment in cricket history that capped that eventful decade with Headley’s unprecedented and immortal 106 and 107 at Lord’s in the famous first Test vs England in 1939.

The speeches and tributes made in his honour at the conferment of the Norman Manley Award in 1973 and the Order of Jamaica in 1977 are informative and should be preserved in a National Heroes’ Library.

“George Headley can be described as a humanist, cricket coach, star of cricket, one of the great sportsmen of the 20th century. He is among the few batsmen of excellence ever produced by the seven major cricketing countries. He will continue to be an inspiration to the young.”

And then the supreme compliment: “His presence in any company is the presence of sustained work, dedicated application and depth of concentration, of the spirit of excellence, and the embodiment of the human will to triumph over threatening odds.

“Headley remains one of the few Jamaicans of his generation with a genuine international reputation and survives with the love, affection and admiration of the broad mass of Jamaican people.”

The truth is that no matter how disappointed we may be when circumstances, external or internal, provide setbacks, sports means so much to the national psyche that any victory — be it in athletics, football, netball, dominoes, or other — will always charge up the national feel-good batteries and restore a measure of hope and enthusiasm for tackling new projects.

And cricket still remains one such game on which Jamaicans and West Indians have continued to place their hopes and aspirations for world leadership at levels which would command respect and recognition for our citizens at home or across the respective diaspora.

Our present poor and humiliating performance in this arena is not only a let-down from the perspective of sports, but continues to punch a huge hole in our sense of national pride when we continue to bow to teams that once provided fodder for the West Indies.

It is important that our present bunch of players recognise and understand how and why George Headley’s contribution goes beyond the glamour of instant television popularity or 20/20 fame.

A victory for the West Indies team will never solve our economic or social problems. But if our teams could only recapture the vision and purposefulness of those earlier teams, we could be well on the way to finding that elusive psychological lift which separates losers from winners, boys from men, dependent from independent.

Headley being designated a hero may just provide a reference for those who wish to discover what makes great sportsmen tick, that it’s not just dexterity with bat and ball, but developing a character that can handle crowd adoration with maturity, rise to the occasion, love the game, and defend the hopes and aspirations of our individual nations.

His elevation would provide a role model not only for cricket, but also for exemplary and courageous behaviour, character, leadership, and exceptional national service.

Lance Neita is a public and community relations writer and consultant.Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.