Branded a rebel: Cricket's forgotten men

[Twan]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/sport/...html?hpt=hp_c1

[Karl]

Very interesting post!

That was a 'wild time'. I actually have a scrap-book on the Windies 1983 tour and happenings surrounding that tour as reported in the 'Gleaner'. Included in the clippings are some comments from the Gleaner's "Letter to the Editor" .

I thought then...and still do...that those tours were like 'Christians taking the gosple to the heathens'. There was this system of aparthied...reminds of what I read and heard about slavery and not dissimliar to what I have heard about life in some US States 'bad in the dark days'.

Incidentally have a copy of Lawrence Rowe's 170+ (175 I think it was...have not watched the tape for a long time)...a beaut of an innings.

Interestingly the S. Africans were seen as the unofficial World Champs' as when banned they had destroyed all other test countries that they played. It was good the Windies 2nd X1 destroyed them in the one-dayers and never lost a "Test series'...winning 1 of the 2 and drawing the other.

[Islandman]

I am something of a convert where the SA rebel tour is concerned.

While I don't buy Murray's line that they went there with any intention to make a social difference in the land of apartheid (it was about money), having spoken to people who lived through the rebel tour and saw where it broke down barriers I have accepted that in retrospect it probably did more good than harm.

The side story to all of this is the utmost respect we should have for the Holdings, Marshalls and Richards,not just as cricketers but as men of courage who did not go. Sure they were in the Test team but even as stars in those pre-T20 days they were not making anything close to what they were being offered by the SA rebel organizers.

[Bricktop]

Disagree wholeheartedly...

[Islandman]

With which part? All of it?

[Bricktop]

This part:

I have accepted that in retrospect it probably did more good than harm

[Islandman]

OK, well like I say I am a convert.

I still wish they had not gone but what seems clear is that they did inspire both black and white cricket fans. We did not get any real coverage of that tour in the Caribbean , nor did we want it, so we can only form an opinion based on the views of those who lived through it.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine...ry/286356.html

[Rudi]

The destruction of Apartheid was about a little more than inspiring white and black cricket fans.

[Islandman]

And the perpetuation of apartheid was about a bit more than cricket as well.

Your point?

[Islandman]

Was Arthur Ashe a sellout?

From Sports Illustrated, December 21, 1992

In 1973, after years of trying, Arthur Ashe wrangled an invitations to play in the South African Open tennis tournament. He wanted to see for himself how the world might help press South Africa to ease its system of racial oppression, its apartheid. In Johannesburg he met a poet and journalist, a black man named Don Mattera. The South African watched when Ashe was confronted by young blacks who hissed that he was an Uncle Tom and told him that his visit only served to legitimize the racist white-minority government, which should be boycotted, made a pariah, until it abandoned apartheid. Mattera heard Ashe defend the use of sporting contacts to chip away at injustice. Allowing one black man to compete in the tournament had been a concession by the government, and, Ashe argued, "small concessions incline toward larger ones."
Mattera listened when Ashe cited Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass on how, since power surrenders nothing without a struggle, progress can come only in unsatisfactorily small chunks, and even the tiniest crumb must be better than nothing at all. The South African blacks shouted that Ashe didn't grasp the nature of the police state that bore down on them, that in South Africa his Reverend King would have been thrown into Robben Island prison with their Nelson Mandela. In the face of their seething anger, Ashe had the saintly temerity to warn that if they hoped to exert consistent moral pressure, their emotions were best kept controlled.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ten...he/sport1.html

[Bricktop]

Yes...

[Rudi]

And the perpetuation of apartheid was about a bit more than cricket as well.

Your point?

So what if it inspired black and white cricket fans. The reason the South African authorities sanctioned the tour was to give some semblance of legitimacy to the apartheid regime.

[Islandman]

Lol! Well, as Mosiah said about Rev Sharpton, I challenge anyone on the forum to put thier human and civil rights record up against Arthur Ashe and mek we see how it measure up.

There are many ways to fight the power. We only seem to think its one way which is probably one reason why we still holding up the rear while other groups make headway.

[Islandman]

No it was not, and it did not. It was a tour primarily to fight back against the international cricket ban they were facing.

[Bricktop]

The rest of his record may be impeccable...but going to SA to play tennis was a slap in the face to the black race...no matter what tripe he used to justify it