SPECTATOR SPORT
Dear diary
Frank Keating
OUT OF the blue the other day came the sort of telephone call I dream about. Might I be interested in glancing at a journal writ- ten 99 years ago by a cricketer when he was taking part in the first ever tour by a team from England to the West Indies? Do I enjoy a five-minute new-laid boiled egg with sea salt and soldiers? I was back in touch pronto with the kind callers, Mr and Mrs Michael Barratt of Worksop. They cer- tainly own a treasure.
The utterly diverting diary — longhand, in pencil or black ink and filling a 140-page `jotter' — was bequeathed in 1952 to Mr Barratt by its author, his grandfather Legh Barratt, farmer, stockbroker and sometime captain of cricket for Norfolk, who was 22 when a member of Mr R.S. Lucas's historic, pioneering team to the Caribbean in the New Year of 1895. The party included two `county regulars' from Surrey, one from Essex, three university blues, and five MCC members. Between 28 January and 1 May they played 16 matches around the islands, won ten of them, lost four and drew two. Having lapped up Barratt's relishable archive, I passed it on to the estimable Wis- den Cricket Monthly, which jumped at run- ning it in toto for its next issues, beginning with the March edition.
What is initially surprising in Barratt's delightful log is how jolly good the native West Indians already were at cricket. The opening matches at Barbados packed in the crowds: 'Grandstands are specially erected. For one stand the seats are £2 a head. About 7,000 watching match clapped and applauded till the ground shook.' But the opposition players were white, settlers, planters, or military folk from the garrison or port.
It was a different story when the team disembarked at Nelson's spectacular dock- yard in Antigua:
14 February — Arrived Antigua and at once start match. Eight out of the eleven playing against us are blacks and playing in bare feet. They go in first on a good wicket and make 105. We make 140 for six. Beautifully situated ground, precipitous mountains all around. About 6-7,000 people watch. The blacks are not nearly so impartial as hitherto in Barba- dos in their applause. In fact, the blacks here consider themselves as good as, if not better than, the whites. In Antigua they also get severely offended if they are addressed as Niggers'. Blacks is the name they like to be called. I notice at our cricket lunch today we are joined by several black men of more than apparent and significant influence . . .
16 February — We finished today by winning by an innings and 50 runs. The Blacks are dis- gusted with themselves and one was heard giving us the reason for their losing — that we were such big fat white men while they were a lot of boys. And I do notice what a puny and small-limbed race of men they are and I attribute that not to the fact of inter- marrying but of living on food with not much nutrition. Another black man remarked that if they had the same food as we, they would readily have beaten us.
And so, a century on, once they had sort- ed out their nutrition, we know all too well how readily they beat us. Barratt's pioneers, mind you, had an inbuilt social excuse for their four prophetic defeats — more any- way than Master Atherton's abstemious squad of 1994:
1 February — The greatest difficulty I have at present is the evading of drinks which are continually being forced down me. I have been introduced to so many fancy drinks, mostly after the nature of cocktails . . I never laughed more or enjoyed a day so much. Made 0. Couldn't see. Got an awful smack on heart from a bumpy ball.
What a gloriously wicked augury those last three sentences represent for an English batsman.
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