On the 8th of October, when the first week of online classes for kindergarten was in full swing, here in Jamaica, I sat down to have a Zoom talk with the Barbadian, former England batsman, and Middlesex legend, currently a director of the Barbados Cricket Association—Mr. Roland Butcher. Our conversation was so inclusive, it will be published as a three-part series. In the first, we will look at Butcher’s life, career and his take on the current hot-topics concerning the West Indies team. The second will tell the tale of the now-famous, High-Performance Centre in Barbados, which Butcher moulded. While the final piece will shed some light on where he thinks the West Indies faltered and continues to fall short. 

Krissania: You are arguably most famous for being the first black cricketer that played for England. But you left Barbados, for the United Kingdom, when you were just 13-years-old. Can you tell me what you remember about that journey?

Roland: You are right. I went to England in 1967 [when] I was 13. It was a fairly, I guess, unsettling time [and a] strange situation; because, Barbados, as part of the Caribbean, is sunshine 365 days of the year, lots of open spaces [and] I lived in a very rural parish. [But] moving to England, which is the complete opposite, was very built up. And the weather, at that time, it seemed cold to me, even though it was May which would have been the start of the summer. It still seemed to be very cold. And on top of that, we were accustomed to seeing cricket played on a regular basis in Barbados, but I was seeing very little at the time. I was [now] seeing football, which was the new game. That’s the English sport so we were seeing that on every street corner, just as you would see cricket in Barbados and in the Caribbean.

Full Story