ABSTRACT
‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?’ is the rhetorical question posed by C.L.R.James in the Preface to Beyond a Boundary, his comprehensive treatise on cricket, West Indian social history, English letters and class struggle. In the book he provides something of a response, explaining the importance of cricket in the West Indies for a people who have everything to do in constructing a national identity:
English people…have a conception of themselves bred from birth which…constitutes a national tradition. Under-developed countries have to go back centuries to rebuild one. We, of the West Indies, have none at all, none that we know of. 1
