Kmflett's Blog

Sir Everton Weekes. A powerful reminder of why Black Lives Matter

The former West Indian cricketer Everton Weekes who died aged 95 on 1^st July was a powerful reminder of why Black Lives Matter. A silence was held to remember him at the start of the England v West Indies Test in Southampton on 8^th July.

Weekes was one of a trio of West Indian batsmen, the others being Sir Frank Worrell and Sir Clyde Walcott, known collectively as the three Ws who formed a powerful presence in Test cricket from the late 1940s and for more than a decade after that.

Weekes Wiki entry is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everton_Weekes

Its right certainly to recall and celebrate Weekes as a cricketing giant but his impact went far wider than that.

During the time the three Ws were central to West Indies Test cricket the permanent captain of the side was always white, an imperial legacy. It wasn’t until 1961 that Frank Worrell became the first permanent black West Indian to captain the side.

Central to the campaign for that to happen was  CLR James. James had been the Guardian’s cricket correspondent in the 1930s and wrote perhaps the greatest ever book on cricket Beyond a Boundary. James was a Trotskyist who met Trotsky himself and also wrote the classic history of the Haitian Revolution, the Black Jacobins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._R._James#

Black Lives Matter is hugely relevant to cricket in 2020 and the history is important too