Reflecting on a rich past

While a whole lot has changed in the 75 years since a motley collection of mainly weekend club cricketers set sail from various points of the Caribbean bound for the first tour of Australia by a West Indies team, there have been two constants.

One is the identity of the team comprising players from Guyana on the South American mainland to Jamaica in the north as the West Indies, an entity recognised in nothing else but cricket and the university. The other is the mutual and genuine affection that has developed through cricket between countries as far apart culturally and ethnically as they are geographically. The pioneers drawn from what were then separate British colonies spent five months in this vast and wondrous land, playing five Tests and nine state matches, did so under the burgundy flag and silver badge, with its palm tree and six stars, that were the emblems of West Indies cricket since the first such team was assembled to tour England in 1900.

The standard raised at the Gabba over the next few days as the teams contest their 100th Test against each other will be the same that first appeared on Australian grounds in 1930. It is West Indies, not Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados or any of the other fragmented, independent mini-states the former colonies have become, each with its own flag, anthem, currency, seat at the United Nations and teams in every other sporting discipline. The insignia the players wear on their caps and shirts will be similar to the original, minimally altered in design and background colour eight years ago only so that it could be patented.

The team led by Shivnarine Chanderpaul is the 13th to bring a challenge from the Caribbean. It is resuming a rivalry that, for a host of reasons, has become more fondly regarded by West Indians than any other. In my 15 visits to Australia, I sense the converse is true.

When Ian Johnson, the Australian captain, returned from Australia's first tour of the Caribbean in 1955, he named his beach house, 'Barbados'. Brian Lara's daughter is Sydney, in honour of the venue of his fabulous 277 in 1992-93. The third name on Curtly Ambrose's baptismal certificate is 'Lynwall', surely misspelt by some registry clerk unfamiliar with the menacing Australian fast bowler of the 1950s. There seem to be any number of middle-aged Garys and Weses around Australia. Perhaps by the end of this brief series, a new addition to a West Indian cricketers' family will bear the name Adelaide.

Over time, the teams have created some of the greatest Tests ever played. The most famous will always be the tie at the Gabba in December 1960. It was the first and was all but perfect - all 40 wickets fell, the last off the penultimate ball after five days with scores equal. There will never be another like it. More nail biters followed. In the fourth Test, Australia's last pair, Ken Mackay and Lindsay Kline, held out for an hour and a half to secure a draw. In the fifth, Australia clinched the series by two wickets amidst the mystery of Wally Grout's missing bail.

There have been several more to jangle nerves and enter the game's folklore. The closest were Australia's draw with one wicket remaining in 1968-69 and West Indies' win by one run in 1992-93, both in Adelaide, and West Indies one-wicket, Lara-inspired last hour triumph in Barbados in 1999. The tied Test kicked off a series that revitalised the game in Australia, much as the recent Ashes thriller has done in England, and secured a special place in the heart of sporting Australia for West Indies cricket. It was a highly significant chapter in West Indian history, the first time they were led on tour by a black captain, Frank Worrell. It was a post previously the preserve of the three per cent white elite and Worrell was only appointed after a strident campaign that paralleled the struggle for independence. There were those waiting for him to fail and to say 'we told you so'. That the opposite was the case was an enormous fillip to the people's self-esteem. On the eve of their departure, some one had the idea to stage a motorcade for the popular losers through the streets of Melbourne. Nearly 100,000 turned out - and this was at a time when Australia still observed a whites-only immigration policy.

A generation later, Clive Lloyd, another formidable captain, fashioned the strongest West Indies team yet assembled on the foundation of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in Australia, a competition that demanded unprecedented standards of professionalism and fitness. The consequence was domination of the international game for 15 years, overwhelming all challengers, not least Australia. Yet Australians could not get enough of them, demanding their return five times in the decade of the 1980s when they were at their peak.

The wheel turned, as it always does, if slower than usual. It is Australia which has ruled the world for 10 years and the West Indies which have assumed the underdog tag. Perhaps over the coming month it will start to turn once more.