Barbados Cricket Buckle

The Buckle was found in a gravel spit in the River Tweed in 1979 [10] and depicts a “well-muscled mulatto probably the offspring of a white overseer and a black slave mother” at the wicket being bowled out.[11][12] He is carrying a spliceless bat and has a navy slave chain collar around his neck. To his left a wattle and daub slave hut can be seen and to the right a cane crushing windmill by a Roystonea oleracea cabbage palm tree. The engraving is believed to be portraiture although the identity of the slave is unknown.[11] Metallurgical analysis of the Buckle by Oxford University placed its manufacture in the "early Victorian period or before".[11]

The earliest dated reference to cricket in Barbados is 1806 however cricket had been played in “all the West Indian islands from a quite early time”.[13] Freed slaves played cricket from the mid-18th century and there are reports of plantation owners encouraging slaves to play cricket.[14] Barbados suffered a huge hurricane in October 1780 which obliterated most palms, windmills and slave huts. The Buckle engraving predates that event. However the three stumps indicate a date after 1777 when the middle stump was added to the wicket.[8]

Analysis by Oxford University revealed the Buckle to be made of “navy brass” (90:10 copper:zinc) [11] British troops were, for the most part responsible for exporting cricket out of the UK and around the Empire.[15] According to Bowen: “ Recreation had to be found for troops and sailors; cricket was an ideal source of it.” [16] Early references to cricket matches in the press (alongside notices for slave sales) in Barbados were specific to the British military who “played at cricket as a principle stress relieving activity – one that allowed them to ‘play being at home’ whilst being away from home.”[17]

The location of the Buckle in the River Tweed suggested that it may have been owned and originally commissioned by a member of the Hotham family whose estate was upstream. Notably William Hotham, the first baron (1736–1813) who had been stationed in Barbados 1779–1780. The Hothams were also noted cricketers known as “the lucky hits of Westminster”.[11] In 1838 James Kelly noted the significance of “mutual confidence and familiarity” between sailors and slaves. So much so that “In the presence of the sailor the Negro feels a man.” [18]

There has been much debate about the origins of cricket in the West Indies and the role that cricket (a game exported with a "made in England" hallmark [19]) has played in subjugation and emancipation. In his book 40 Million Dollar Slaves, William C. Rhoden recognised that: “In play the slave could become master; the powerless could become powerful. Athletic competition or a mere athletic feat ... cutting cane ....was a free space where bodies bound and scarred by chains could soar.” [20] Although focused on US slaves, Rhoden's comments are apposite for the experience of slaves in all nations.

In the first chapter of his book "Muscular Learning", Professor Clem Seecharan reflects at some length on the importance of the Barbados Cricket Buckle recognising that its depiction on a Barbados postage stamp on the 60th anniversary of West Indies cricket was appropriate given cricket's role as a “political instrument” from slavery through emancipation to independence.[14]

Although references to slavery and cricket are extremely rare they do exist. In reference to a diary entry by Jamaican slave owner Thistlewood that cricket was played in June 1778, Professor R Burton was prompted to wonder if the slaves tasked to retrieve the ball when it went beyond the boundary were becoming drawn into the game.[18] This was echoed by Seecharan who notes that in Barbados, cricket was played in clearings in cane fields and slaves were tasked with retrieving the ball and throwing it back into play and points out that “there are accounts of planters too encouraging slaves to play cricket.” [14] This encounter of slaves with cricket is supported by former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in his extensive History of West Indies Cricket, writing that: “the young sons of the slaves were required to bowl at the young sons of the slave owners or to the army officers” adding “of course the sons of the slaves practised batting in their spare time.” [21]

The engraving on the Barbados Buckle depicts the point when slaves moved not merely within the boundary but to the batting crease itself. The point when they became, as C.L.R. James put it in Beyond a Boundary, “that genus Britannicus, a fine batsman.” [22] Although the Buckle batsman is depicted as being clean bowled Seecharan highlights the Buckle slave's role as batsman; noting that his possession of bat not ball is subversive.[14]

The Buckle has been featured on coins, stamps and cricket trophies.

• Barbados Slave Code
• Cricket in Barbados
• Cricket in the West Indies