Cricket in Barbados — The Island Game Takes Its Distinctive Form, 1860s

The small size of Barbados — twenty-one miles by fourteen — concentrated its cricket culture in a way that larger territories could not match. Every village had a ground, every community a club.

Barbados had been a British colony since 1625 and cricket had been played there since at least the 1820s. By the 1860s the game's social geography had been established: cricket was played by the white planter class at the top of the social pyramid, by the coloured middle class in the intermediate clubs, and — increasingly — by the Afro-Barbadian working class who would eventually produce the talent that dominated West Indian cricket in the twentieth century. The Garrison Savannah ground in Bridgetown was the central venue, hosting matches between the military and the civilian clubs. The inter-parish cricket matches — each Barbadian parish had its own club — created a competitive structure that sustained year-round cricket culture. By the 1870s Barbados was producing players whose quality was recognised by visiting English touring sides.