(April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday, was World Book Day. It passed unnoticed in Jamaica.)

A recent poll on the BBC internet site chose Johannes Gutenberg, the creator of the printing press, as the greatest inventor of the millennium. Surely he was the right choice, for no invention of the past thousand years has so changed society. Before the development of  printing in about 1450, the number of manuscripts in Europe could be counted in thousands. Fifty years later there were more than 9,000,000 books. The printing press took knowledge from the province of a privileged few and made it available to all. If knowledge is power, this was the greatest empowerment of the people in history.

After the five love in South Africa and the 51 all out, cricket seemed a doomed sport that time had passed by. But the astonishing turn around by Brian Lara and his men has left the game very much still alive and kicking. The WICB however, can not afford to rest on its laurels. West Indies cricket might no longer be on the verge of dying, but it is by no means in good health. Unless we get young people playing the game again, it can not have a good future.

'I want to know and you tell me true, What the hell the police can do'

So charged a big dancehall hit of yesteryear. And a lot of people agree. They argue that our soaring crime rate is the direct result of a deeply flawed society - endemic poverty, poor education, massive income disparity, a vicious cycle of ghetto violence from parent to child, an 85% illegitimate birth rate and consequent lack of male role models. Until these are remedied, they say, nothing we do can improve matters.

“History is nothing but a record of the crimes and misfortunes of man” wrote Voltaire. A famous Chinese proverb agrees - “Fortunate countries have no history”.

Compared to the often chilling chronicles of our nearest neighbours - Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic - Jamaica’s past makes pretty tame reading. We have no ‘Remember the Maine’ invasions, Citadelle Lafferriere horrors, or Trujillo massacres to contemplate with fascinated dismay. The Sam Sharpe slave uprising, the Morant Bay rebellion and the Frome riots would scarcely rate footnotes in these countries a mere 100 miles away. Jamaica did have to endure the unspeakable brutalities of slavery, but that was an almost universal New World experience. Even then slaves in the English speaking Caribbean were freed by decree a generation earlier than anywhere else, and there were no brutal liberation wars here as in Haiti.

According to famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, the principle of legitimacy is not a European or Christian prejudice but amounts to a universal sociological law. The general societal rule is that no child should be brought into the world without an acknowledging father  to act as the custodial male link between the child and the community. The crucial determinant of legitimacy is not legality, a widely varying concept, but the male’s public commitment to his child’s mother. Virtually every known culture favours children born of such unions.

‘Only cricket unites the West Indies. To us it is more than just a game, it is a way of life.

Sir Frank Worrell

My conviction that cricket is the greatest sport ever invented by man or god was severely shaken by the massacre in South Africa. Each pathetic surrender only made it more obvious that cricket was dying both as a game and a West Indian cultural bond. Not even the players seemed to consider what they were doing important. They simply went through the motions like workmen earning an unhappy living.

Psychological studies show that attractive women are generally considered nicer, smarter and more honest than those who are not. But though life often seems easier for good-looking females, experience inclines one to the view that beauty can be a curse as well as a blessing. Pretty young girls who are constantly indulged can become willfully self-centered. They may not be inherently stupider than those less favoured, but most girls used to getting by on flirtatious smiles never fully develop their minds. (A cynical aphorism says beauty times brains is a constant.). Many businessmen reckon that pretty girls in general make poor employees as they tend to be spoilt and lazy. Attractiveness often means attitude.

Jamaica’s homicide rate of 36 per 100,000 is not as high as that of world leaders El Salvador, Colombia or South Africa, but it is over three times that of Trinidad, over five times that of the USA and over twenty times that of Britain.

Except for Switzerland and Sweden, the only countries to enjoy uninterrupted democratic rule between 1914 and 1945 were Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This was no accident. As the black American Economist Thomas Sowell wrote.

It is only a game and, in the larger scheme of things, not very important. But mankind needs its diversions. And no other outdoor sport, and few endeavours of any kind, provides such lasting pleasures as cricket. Here the onlooker measures his satisfaction not merely in terms of results, but in the beauty of the spectacle.