A man with strong, Afrocentric beliefs, CLR James nonetheless had respect for some European customs. Cricket, the English summer game, was perhaps the Trinidadian Marxist’s greatest recreational passion.

While James’ Beyond A Boundary is autobiographical, it shows the impact that cricket had on West Indians, many of whom lived in the United Kingdom (UK) prior to the arrival of Caribbean immigrants aboard the Empire Windrush in June 1948.

Six months before the Windrush‘s historic sail to the UK, the English cricket team travelled to the West Indies for a four-match Test series, which they lost 0-2. It was their second series defeat to the team which comprised players from different islands.

Two years later, the West Indies made their fourth trip to the UK, hunting their first series win on British soil. They won the four-Test series 3-1, tying the contest with a 326-run win in the second match at Lord’s.

Victory by the ‘colonies’ over the ‘mother country’ was not only a big thing for West Indians back home. It was just as satisfying for the Windrush Generation — West Indians who had emigrated to the UK between 1948 and 1971.

They were at Lord’s, The Oval, Trent Bridge, Headingley, and Old Trafford cheering the heroics of George Headley, Alf Valentine, Sonny Ramadhin, Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott, Garfield Sobers, Wes Hall, Rohan Kanhai, Lance Gibbs, Clive Lloyd, from the earlier era, to Lawrence Rowe, Vivian Richards, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, and others.

In Steve Riley’s 2010 documentary, Fire in Babylon, Guyanese fastbowler Colin Croft spoke about the significance of West Indian cricket teams doing well, especially against England.

“We had been born in colonial times. We grew up in independent times. Come the 70s, we started thinking like West Indians and not like Englishmen who were living in the West Indies,” he said.

The greatest evidence of that new mindset came during the 1976 tour of England, when the hosts’ captain Tony Greig, a white South African-born, spoke disparagingly of his opponents and their chances of victory.

According to Greig, the press was “building these West Indians up, because I’m not really sure they’re as good as everyone thinks they are. When they’re good, they’re good. But if they’re down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of [my teammates], to make them grovel.”

West Indies won the five-match series 3-0, with a crushing 231-run triumph in the final Test at The Oval. That saw a brutal spell of fast-bowling from Holding who returned figures of 14 wickets for 149 runs.

The Caribbean community also watched their team win successive World Cups in England in 1975 and 1979. At the height of their powers, they inflicted a humiliating 5-0 whitewash on the Englishmen in 1984.

Cricketers born in the Caribbean but raised in the UK began playing for England in the 1980s. Among them fast bowler Norman Cowan of Jamaica, the St Vincent opening batsman Wilf Slack, and Phillip DeFreitas, an allrounder who was born in Dominica.

The rowdy West Indians whose horns blared and pot covers clattered in support of their team have long left English grounds. Their grandchildren, born in the UK, prefer football and even rugby over cricket.

In 2024 it will be 40 years since Clive Lloyd’s team destroyed England. No longer the force of yesteryear, the West Indies tour that country next summer for a three-Test series.