In the fifties my Grandmother, who came from Paddington when it was a slum, worked in a match factory in Zetland, then an industrial suburb in inner southern Sydney. Her legs were stuffed for the rest of her life from mixing phosphate, but this was the post war boom, wasn’t it, and while my drunken Grandfather was off somewhere in Sydney driving a bus she threw a sickie - the West Indies were in town, and ‘Keithy’ Miller was batting.
“They had this big tall fast bowler,” she told me. “As black as the ace of spades. After the end of one over he went back to stand in front of the hill. A bloke offered him a bottle of beer; he upped and downed it all in one go. What a cheer he got from the crowd!”
These days he’d probably get banned for twelve months, while the bloke with the bottle would probably be ejected. The crowd wouldn’t cheer that. We live in conservative times, our lives controlled by yellow shirted goons with wires hanging out of their ears and IQs that match their shoe sizes.
Back in the fifties the West Indies were part of the orientalism that brought a cosmopolitan flavour to post war cricket. Australia hosted and went on a widening array of tours, more or less successfully, with nations from the Caribbean and the subcontinent, playing with a grace that was often forced to stand up under very trying circumstances.
A couple of generations later, after my Nan had become part of the working class retiring to the Central Coast of NSW, the Windies had grown into a fearsome pace battery backed by some of the most entertaining willow wielding seen in cricket. She still loved watching them.
I recall watching a NSW game against a touring West Indies side (when we used to do such things, letting touring sides get used to our wickets and thus making our domestic test matches competitive, rather than the learn-as-you-go fiascos we are presented with today, where touring sides get their act together by the second, third or - if they’re lucky enough to get one - fourth tests). It was at the SCG and Viv Richards was batting. Richards had played and missed against a NSW fast bowler, which might have been a young Geoff Lawson, and was rehearsing his shot as the bowler went back to his mark.
It was possibly Rick McCosker, fielding in the covers, who suggested to Viv that ‘you can’t hit the ball after it’s gone past you’.
The gum chewing of the Antiguan intensified and he fixed the fielder with a steely glare. Next ball was smacked about two feet to the right of the cover fielder, flying like Lord Mountbattens sandshoe to bang into the advertising hoarding in front of the [then] Paddington hill.
Richards rocked back on his haunches, resting on his bat to calmly observe that ‘you can’t field the ball after it’s gone past you either, mon’.
Which brings us to the surprising brittleness of Australia’s test campaign in the Caribbean.
On paper - and form - Australia should have won this series 3-0 by an innings in each test. It should be no contest. But it is. The Windies went close in the first test and, while never quite getting on top, weren’t disgraced in the drawn second test either. After the first days play in the third test in Barbados they appear to have a chance to take Australia cheaply in the first innings, but there is a lot of cricket left to go in this match.
Backed by a hubristic media following and a self induced air of supremacy, Australia has gathered an invincible aura about itself that was exposed a little during the Indian tour.
Has Australia, as Ricky Ponting implied about its bowling at least, come back to the pack? Or is the West Indies really improving? Caribbean commentators continue to bemoan the state of West Indian cricket, while the loss of Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath really are akin to losing Lillee, Chappell and Marsh in the early eighties. Does that mean Australian cricket is set for something akin to the wilderness years we experienced in the eighties?
Probably not, but the Windies have indeed lifted while Australia is not as certain of it’s status as it has been. A lot rests on the performance of the new spinner, Beau Casson.
Just as the Indians took a moral victory out of the tied test series in Australia last summer, the Windies ability to tie this series could see some serious soul searching - especially regarding Ponting’s captaincy - amongst the Australians and could herald something of (yet another) renewal for the formerly dominant West Indies.
But these signs have emerged before, after a win in South Africa and their most recent drawn (two test) series against Sri Lanka.
West Indian cricket - facing, as it does, the cultural onslaught from North America via cable TV to pull kids to Basketball, Athletics and Baseball - probably is terminal, but Indian cricket isn’t. They’re flogging all comers at the moment, and will take great glee in watching the Australians struggle.
The Australian cricket team is mortal after all. And my dead grandmother would be cheering for the West Indies today if she could. She always had a lot of time for the underdog - you get that working in a match factory in Zetland - and, if we lived in more enlightened times, someone would give Daren Powell a bottle of beer.
Methuselah, playing uppishly behind point
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