Think Piece on Tanty Merle at the Oval

Cricket was more than just a game at a point in time for people of the West Indies. It was a tool, it was a sword. A sword with the sole intent of fighting against the racial ideologies associated with Caribbean people. The Caribbean was deemed as inferior and in the eyes of everyone outside and even sadly by some of those inside of it. However no one in a million years expected the West Indies cricket team to become so dominant that it would be considered the best, so good that it was maybe the best that the world may have ever seen. This sole fact allowed the enthusiasm that Tanti Merle showed about treating cricket as a celebration to be not only an acceptable thing, but also a norm for those older members of society that know and understand the struggle of the region post-independence and how important cricket was to a region in a transitioning phase. This piece reflects this view and challenges the claims and events described by Paul Keens-Douglas by using an objective view and external literary comparisons in order to prove the validity in his ideas and those of the writer.

Cricket brought a certain level of pride to the West Indies and this pride was followed by a sense of regionalism [1]. This game, this sport did a lot for the people of the region, not by just changing the image of the region to a more pleasant one where natives were considered equals in the eyes of foreigners but how it brought together the people from those tiny dots scattered below the equator to feel united and have a sense of belonging in the world. This explains why Tanti Merle felt so strongly about her native home of St. Vincent and had to boast of it being part of the Combined Islands. It brought her great pride to see that team play as a representation of her home island in which she clearly appreciated and was very fond of. This was seen when she showed how well documented her history of the island was and how much interest she had vested in her home to retain this...