#clr james

2 incidents tagged

Frank Worrell — The First Black West Indies Captain, 1960

West Indies

1960-09-15

After more than three decades of West Indies Test cricket being captained exclusively by white men, Frank Worrell was appointed as the regular captain for the 1960-61 tour of Australia. The decision followed a year-long campaign by C.L.R. James in the Trinidad newspaper The Nation, which framed the colour bar in West Indies captaincy as a colonial relic that had to fall. Worrell would justify the choice with a tour that revived Test cricket and earned the team a half-million-strong farewell parade in Melbourne.

#frank worrell#clr james#west indies

🔥Moderate

'The Black Bradman' — How a Nickname Followed George Headley

West Indies

1934-06-01

From the early 1930s English newspapers, and then much of the cricketing world, called George Headley 'the Black Bradman.' Headley, polite and reserved, never publicly objected; in private and in CLR James's account, he and many West Indian writers preferred to invert the formula — Bradman as 'the white Headley.' The nickname is a small case study in how race coloured even the most generous compliments paid to inter-war Caribbean cricketers.

#george-headley#black-bradman#west-indies