Forty-four years after his historic Test debut as England’s first black cricketer, Roland Orlando Butcher continues to observe hurdles hindering players from diverse backgrounds in the sport.
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His entry into Test cricket in March 1981 not only celebrated his exceptional batting skills but also signalled to the fervent cricket community, particularly the West Indian diaspora in England, that reaching the pinnacle of the game was achievable. Butcher’s breakthrough paved the path for subsequent black players, many of whom emerged from Middlesex, his county side, to don the England jersey.
In this chat with Sportstar, Butcher talks at length about his early days in the Caribbean, how he got hooked on cricket, and the myriad challenges along the way.
Q) Let’s start with your childhood in Barbados. How did you get into cricket? Who were your heroes growing up? Where did you play?
A) I was born in East Point, St. Philip, Barbados, a very rural area close to the sea, right on the coast. As a kid, I got involved with cricket and fell in love with the sport at a very young age. By the time I was six, I was really hooked on the game. I played informally with the boys of my age and above, as there were no proper clubs nearby. Most of our cricket was played in the streets, trying to emulate the greats that we had been reading about in books. In those days, we didn’t have television, so we had to read about the players in books or listen to the radio when there was cricket going on. I remember laying in bed late at night, listening to the radio, when cricket was happening in Australia. I have a family connection to cricket as well; my family member, Basil Butcher, was a West Indies star player. His father originated from Barbados, but he was born in Guyana and played cricket for Guyana. I guess the love for cricket runs in the family, and I just fell in love with the sport and wanted to keep playing.
Q) Do you recall the first game you watched live?
A) The first live cricket game I watched was in 1965 when the West Indies played Australia [in the second Test at Bridgetown]. My cousin, Monica Butcher, who has since passed away, took me to the game. It was a memorable match filled with runs. Bill Laurie and Bobby Simpson put on over 300 for the first wicket. Someone from the West Indies (Seymour Nurse) scored a double hundred, and somebody else (Rohan Kanhai) got a hundred. It was my first time watching a proper game of cricket and it really solidified my love for the sport.
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Growing up, I was surrounded by females, as my father was in England. My grandmother and my aunt took care of me and my sister, while my other relatives were also mostly female. Despite the lack of male figures in the house, the women in the West Indies had a great love for cricket. It was unusual for a woman to take a boy to a cricket game, but I’m grateful that my cousin did. That experience meant a lot to me, and I’m thankful for it.
Q) Your parents moved to England, and you joined them later. The weather and culture are vastly different. How challenging was this transition for you, especially regarding your love for cricket, given football’s dominance in England?
A) My parents had been in England since about 1955. I was born in 1953, and my mother joined my father a couple of years after that. I didn’t actually come to England until 1967. It was very challenging. I arrived as a 13-year-old in May 1967, which should be the start of the summer, but for me, it was absolutely freezing. That was the first shock because in Barbados, you have sunshine 365 days a year. I arrived in the UK, stepped off the plane, and while breathing, this white stuff was coming out of my mouth, which was a shock.
When I got home, my parents had four more children. I was reunited with two brothers and two sisters. My elder sister, Margaret, and I were the ones who came. Adjusting to the weather and the food in England, which was totally different from the Caribbean, was also an issue. In Barbados, cricket was played on every street corner, but in Stevenage, England, a new town, cricket was not high on the agenda for kids. On every street corner, kids were playing football. I had never played football before, so that was another adjustment. It took a while, but eventually, I adapted and developed a passion for football, even more so than cricket, because we were always playing football.
It was actually through football that I got into cricket. On weekends, kids from the area would go to the local park, make makeshift goals, and play football for hours. One particular Sunday, after playing football for three hours, some guys came onto the field to set up a cricket match. They were short on players and asked if any of us wanted to join. Initially, I was reluctant, but my best friend in the UK, who was English, persuaded me to play. I ran home, told my mother, and went back to the park to play. I didn’t do anything fantastic—I scored about 12 runs and took a couple of catches—but to my surprise, they invited me to play the following week.
This was the local third XI for Stevenage. I thought they wanted me to play because they were short of players, but soon I moved up to the second XI, and, by age 15, I was playing in the first XI. My development in cricket started from there.
Regarding the political climate as I was progressing as a player, it’s important to note that my journey had some fortunate turns. One of the players on the Stevenage team was also a football manager and ended up working for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club. He recommended me to the coaching staff there, and they invited me to play for the youth team. I spent two summers playing in Gloucestershire, staying with my friend Cyril Hammond’s family. We stayed at the county grounds, living in the dressing rooms, and the coach’s wife would come in early to cook breakfast for us.
“I had never played football before, so that was another adjustment. It took a while, but eventually, I adapted and developed a passion for football, even more so than cricket, because we were always playing football.” | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
By the end of 1969, when I was 16, Gloucestershire thought I was a bit too young to join the full-time professional staff. They sent me to Lords for a trial with the MCC Young Professionals. I did well there and was offered an apprenticeship for 1970 and 1971, which I completed alongside Ian Botham. Being based at Lords allowed Middlesex to notice me, and they offered me a contract in 1972.
During my early years in England, from 1967 to 1972, I didn’t understand the concept of racism because it wasn’t something I had encountered in Barbados. In Barbados, the population was predominantly black, and the only white people were on the plantations. My experience in England was initially free from awareness of racism, unlike that of my brothers, who were born in England and grew up within that system. It was only later in my career that I understood racism and how people treated me differently because I looked different. Had I been born in England; I would have understood racism much earlier. In fact, my father, when he went to live in Stevenage, started living there in 1957. He was the first black person to ever live in Stevenage.
Q) Football played a big role in bringing you back to cricket, didn’t it? Do you still follow Stevenage Club closely? How are they doing?
A) Yes, of course. When I’m in the UK, I get invited to games at Stevenage. I still follow how they’re doing because it’s a small town with a lot of sporting success. Stevenage has produced great athletes like Lewis Hamilton, Ashley Young, and Kevin Phillips. It’s amazing how many sportspeople have come from there, considering the town’s limited facilities. Despite that, there’s a great love of sport in Stevenage. Take Lewis Hamilton, for example. There’s nothing in Stevenage that can prepare you to become a Formula One driver, but he still became one of the greatest drivers the world has ever seen.
Q) Reflecting on your Test debut in 1981, what was the emotional experience of playing for a different country in Barbados like? Additionally, how challenging was it to face that West Indies team?
A) If I go back to 1980, that was really when the stars aligned for me. Everything I touched turned to gold. The year started off in February with my marriage. I then made my England debut in 1980 in the One-Day series against Australia. My club, Middlesex, won the Championship and the (Gillette) Cup in 1980. In my first game for England, I scored 52 against Australia, which became the fastest international 50 by a debutant in the world. That record stood from 1980 until it was broken in 2021 by Ishan Kishan and Krunal Pandya.
In the final of the knockout cup, the last Gillette Cup, I made 50 runs, and we beat Surrey. A couple of months later, I was selected to go on the West Indies tour, which started in early January 1981. Now, going on that tour was a formidable challenge because the West Indies were by far the most dominant team in world cricket. They had a fantastic fast bowling lineup with Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Colin Croft, and Malcolm Marshall, some of the greatest fast bowlers ever to play the game. Additionally, they had some of the best batsmen ever, like Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, and Larry Gomes.
It was a bigger challenge for me because I was a black West Indian returning to the West Indies to play against the West Indies. The England team I was part of was one of the best England teams ever. We had a lineup that included Geoffrey Boycott, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Mike Gatting, Peter Willey, Ian Botham, John Emburey, Paul Downton, Bob Willis, and Graham Dilley. But we were playing against a team that was on a different level.
Roland Butcher became the first West Indian to tour with a full England side and was qualified on the basis of his long residence in England, although he was born in Barbados. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives | Photo published on September 06, 1980.
The first Test match was in Trinidad, but I didn’t play there. The second Test match was in Guyana, and I was due to play, but then the Robin Jackman affair happened. Bob Willis got injured and was replaced by Robin Jackman, but his entry permit was revoked by the Guyanese government because of his prior visits to South Africa, which was under apartheid at the time. This didn’t sit well in the Caribbean. Jackman was asked to leave, and the British Foreign Office and the English Cricket Board decided that if he had to leave, the whole team would leave. So, the Test match was cancelled, and we moved on to Barbados, which was going to be the third Test but became the second.
I made my debut in Barbados, the place of my birth and where I had seen my very first Test match. There was extra pressure because I was playing at home. Playing against those West Indian greats was a huge challenge, and on day two of my first Test match, our assistant manager Ken Barrington had a heart attack and passed away, making it even more challenging to focus on the game while dealing with the loss of a team member. That first Test match went from excitement to sadness very quickly.
So, 1980 was a great year, but 1981 didn’t start well. Reflecting on more than 40 years as one of the first black cricketers for England and one of the few Caribbean players to play for the Three Lions, I think there have been about 25, including females. The significance of that moment back in 1980 really started to show because it was a breakthrough. No black player had played for England before, so it was a real breakthrough. It made others like Norman Cowans, Wilf Slack, Neil Williams, Devon Malcolm, Gladstone Small, and Chris Lewis believe that they could do it too. They have said publicly that they felt empowered by my example and went on to represent England.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand the significance because I was focused on fulfilling my ambition to play international cricket. Later in life, you get wiser and understand the political implications and historical significance of what happened. Being the first black player motivated others. There were a lot of West Indians in England, and West Indian kids born there, like my brothers and sisters. Suddenly, they felt that if they worked hard enough, the possibility of playing for England existed. So, later on, I understood the significance.
Q) Speaking of West Indies cricket today, is there a disconnect between the team and the interest among West Indian kids in Britain? Do they still follow the team as part of their cultural milieu? What are your thoughts on this?
A) Yeah, there’s a big disconnect. When I was playing, our parents had come from the Caribbean with a very strong cricketing background. They loved the sport in the West Indies. They came to England but still had a love for the sport. They really looked forward to when the West Indies came to England to play cricket and followed the fortunes of the West Indies team, who were very dominant. Those people were empowered to feel proud of being black in a new society.
Now, what really happened with my brothers and sisters, and the brothers and sisters of thousands of others born in England, is that they didn’t have the same feel for West Indies cricket because they didn’t grow up with it. My mother and father grew up in Barbados, where cricket was everything. It was always there and part of the fabric of being a West Indian. But my siblings grew up in England, where there weren’t many black people playing the game at a high level at that time. The only time they felt proud was when the West Indies came to England, and they were very strong then. They were beating the English, and their supporters felt good because they could go to work the next day, lift their heads up, and feel proud.
Roland Butcher pulls Malcolm Marshall during a tour match between England and Barbados at the Kensington Oval on March 10, 1981. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
But the kids—their kids—were English, and their loyalty was really to football. They saw role models in the 1960s involved with football. So, that’s where their loyalties lay. Another factor was the decline of the West Indies team, which affected the love for cricket among people in England. People stopped associating themselves with West Indies cricket because there was nothing to be proud of anymore. They couldn’t go to work with their chests pushed out. Instead, they were going into a sort of depression.
Also, during the last 15 to 20 years, we saw the rise of the public-school cricketer from fee-paying schools. State schools didn’t have cricket programs and struggled for facilities. You may remember there was a period in the 1980s when successive governments in England, under the Conservatives, were selling off the playing field of schools for housing developments. This reduced the space for kids to play sports. The majority of West Indian kids went to normal government schools, which had no facilities, no coaches, and no equipment. The love for cricket wasn’t there anymore, and they weren’t encouraged, so nothing happened with cricket for them.
On the other hand, private schools had fantastic facilities, full-time coaches, all the equipment, and they went on tours. They had everything. So, the players getting into the England team started coming from those big schools. Black cricketers or youngsters interested in cricket just disappeared. After the golden period from the 80s to the 90s, when the players I mentioned played, it has been all downhill.
Only recently has Jofra Archer played, but Archer cannot really be considered a British black player because he didn’t grow up in England and didn’t come through the system here. He was brought in, and that’s how he made it. So, he’s not a good example. You have to look a long way back to players like Michael Carberry (in the 1980s), and that was years ago.
Q) Tell us a bit about the African-Caribbean Engagement Programme (ACE)?
A) I’m actually a patron of ACE. It is designed to give black players the opportunity to play the game at the highest level if they want to. The interesting thing about ACE is that it was developed by Ebony Rainford-Brent, a former England player who is black and female. She was working for Surrey as the Women’s Director of Cricket and managed to persuade Surrey to support this program. Surrey is located in the heart of an area surrounded by Black and Asian communities. These inner-city areas lack facilities and parks.
Surrey agreed to assist and held an open day for ACE and invited kids to come, and about 100 kids turned up, which was a surprise. They held trials, and the standard among these kids was so high that Surrey signed five of them straight away. When these kids were asked which club they played for, who their coach was, and about their equipment, all the answers came back the same: they didn’t have a club or a coach and just played in the street. These kids simply had talent. Surrey then realised this could be really beneficial, so they decided to support it further.
“Without a new model, West Indies cricket will continue to struggle, potentially even facing extinction. This would be a tragic outcome for a region with such rich cricketing history.” | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
From there, ACE has developed to the point where it now has programmes in Birmingham, Manchester, and Bristol, and they are expanding into Reading. They have set up academies in all these areas, giving young Black and Asian kids the opportunity to play cricket, which they didn’t have before. I believe that within the next five to 10 years, you will see these players emerge again. This program will rekindle opportunities for British-born black players who were previously denied them.
Since the revelations from Azeem Rafiq, everyone is now making efforts to give Black and Asian players opportunities. It’s a good time to capitalise on these opportunities and make the best of them.
Q) What do you think is the main challenge facing the development of young cricketers in the Caribbean right now?
A) I’ve been involved with developing cricket in Barbados and the West Indies for about 20 years now. In 2004, I was offered a job in Barbados as the Director of Sports at the University of the West Indies. The reason I was offered that job was due to the university’s principal, Sir Hilary Beckles, a great West Indian historian. Sir Hilary Beckles, now a visionary, has written many books on cricket. I think you should read some of his books. He foresaw the age of globalization in cricket, where players would prioritize franchises over their countries. He wrote about this vision years ago in one of his books.
His vision also included developing intelligent cricketers, meaning cricketers who could manage both studying and playing cricket. This belief stemmed from his own experience at Hull University, where he played cricket and studied simultaneously. He was a good cricketer, having played with Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran, Lance Gibbs, and Derek Murray at Warwickshire.
At Hull University, Sir Hilary faced a dilemma when the final of a cricket cup coincided with his final exams. He chose to play the cricket match, which Hull University won. Despite missing his exams, he was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship by the university’s principal, who broke tradition to honour his commitment to the university’s cricket team. This experience planted the seeds for his belief that cricket and education must coexist.
In 2004, he offered me the job of developing a sports programme at the university that would nurture student-athletes while balancing both sports and academics. As the Director of Sports, I was in charge of 14 sports, but I focused on cricket first due to my background. Our facilities were pretty average at that point. Before my tenure, sport was run by the Guild of Students (Recognised Student Government on University of West Indies Campus), which organised only three or four matches a year.
With Sir Hilary’s support, along with sponsors and some luck, we improved our facilities significantly. The ODI World Cup was coming to the West Indies in 2007, which led to the development of new infrastructure, including a new pavilion and improved fields at the 3Ws Oval, named after Weeks, Worrell, and Walcott, all of whom are buried there.
My role involved scouting for talented athletes who were also good students and bringing them to the university on scholarships. This led to the rapid development of cricket, as it is deeply ingrained in our culture. Many of our students ended up playing first-class cricket for various islands and the West Indies. We even got the university team into the West Indies first-class cricket league as the Combined Campuses and Colleges team.
Additionally, I became a director of the Barbados Cricket Association, a role I held for 10 years until I resigned in December 2022 to avoid a conflict of interest after becoming a West Indies senior men’s selector in January 2023. During my tenure, I was also the Chairman of the Sir Everton Weekes Centre of Excellence, which oversees the national teams from under-13 to the franchise level.
Despite these efforts, West Indies cricket faces significant challenges. It is under-resourced, with poor facilities and inadequate coaching. Even in Barbados, known for producing great players, the only indoor cricket school is at the university. Other countries, like Trinidad, have a few facilities, but many depend entirely on the weather, which hampers consistent practice.
The pitches across the region are subpar, even at the first-class level. Financial constraints prevent proper coaching and technological advancements. The Future Tours Programme, established by the ICC, disproportionately benefits India, Australia, and England, where the home team takes all the revenue, leaving visiting teams like the West Indies with nothing. This disparity is exacerbated by the smaller stadiums and lower ticket prices in the Caribbean.
Without a new model, West Indies cricket will continue to struggle, potentially even facing extinction. This would be a tragic outcome for a region with such rich cricketing history.
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