This ability to reconstruct without apparently breaking stride has
recently been copied by the West Indian Test teams which did not lose a
major series between 1980 and 1995. In one glorious spell of 19 years
( 1976 to 1995), the West Indies played unbeaten with the exception of
one brief and unhappy visit to New Zealand. From the time that first-class
cricket was introduced to the Caribbean in 1865, Barbados has been a
dominant force and its periods of slump have been brief and infrequent. It
is this sociological miracle that has led scholars such as Professor Hilary
Beckles and Dr Brian Stoddart in recent years to examine Barbadian soci-
ety and culture very closely. The search for explanations of the cricket cult
has led naturally to the academic institutions and it is almost impossible
to write about Barbadian cricket without somehow reflecting on Barbadian
education. This examination of the nurseries, then, is as natural and as
important as a scrutiny of the sport itself. It adds to common knowledge a
considerable store of details and statistics about Barbadian cricketers in the
hope of providing concrete data to form the basis of further sociological
analysis by other scholars.

The Cricket Nurseries of Colonial Barbados is written with the firm belief
that sociology and history must, to a considerable degree, be grounded on
simple arithmetic. It is not enough to declare that three Barbadian schools
wielded a disproportionate influence in the days before independence.
Their influence can to some extent be quantified and thus be more pre-
cisely evaluated. This book is also intended to fill a gap in West Indian
cricket literature. Although the story of Barbadian cricket is so excep-
tional, it has never really been told in sufficient detail. Apart from Bruce Hamilton's
pioneering Cricket in Barbados, written more than 50 years ago,
one can point only to the 100 Years of Organised Cricket in Barbados
1892-1992, produced by the Barbados Cricket Association as part of its
centenary celebrations. These are the only two books dealing exclusively
thus far with the miracle that is cricket in Barbados. There are, of course,
a number of excellent articles on the subject, and those by Stoddart are
certainly worthy of special mention, but surely this wonderful epic deserves
much more than that.

Most of the factual cricket details presented here have been gleaned
from the files of the Combermerian, the Harrisonian and the Lodge School
Record. These school magazines were published with great regularity in for-
mer times, but have been much scarcer since the 1960s. The prohibitive
cost of publication has limited the schools to a few scattered editions over
the past 35 years or so. The dearth of more recent news is reflected in the
chapters themselves, which tend to become much more sweeping and gen-

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