The Editor, Sir:

I have just completed the reading of Arnold 'Scree' Bertram's book, Jamaica at the Wicket: A Study of Jamaican Cricket and its Role in Shaping the Jamaican Society. Bertram's latest effort is truly a gem and a must-read for anyone who is interested in understanding the powerful role that sports and in particular cricket, in our case, can play in a society's development.

Bertram's tickling outside the off stump to explore the nexus between cricket and our own development in pre-and post-colonial times has revealed a very interesting fact which is that the sport was used as a tool for the reinforce of colonial stereotype values in racial and class discrimination as in keeping with the Kensington and Kingston Cricket Club as all-white enclaves.

motivational force

But if the intention was to destroy the self-worth of our cricketers and the wider society by the employment of the practices mentioned, the agents of our colonial masters, the early pioneers as they would have us call them, would be in for a real awakening, as with the advent of Headley, J.K. Holt Sr, M.M. Moyston and others, the same sport was used to inspire a new generation of players , such as Collie Smith, Alf Valentine and Allan Rae who went on to lay the foundation and develop the game to a point where it became the single most important unifying and motivational force in our pre and early post-independence development.

Pity it is that the inherent discipline and team spirit so abundantly present in the early practice of the game have ceased to exist in our wider society.

Hopefully though as a society, we are still at the wicket and some good runs including a couple centuries are still in the offering.

I am, etc.,

WINSTON BARRETT

wbarrett@yahoo.com

Kingston 6