Kumar Sangakara, that most erudite of modern cricketers, chose as his topic for the annual MCC Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s last week “the spirit of Sri Lanka’s Cricket”.

As much as he understandably dealt with the fascinating history of his lovely, but so frequently turbulent homeland, there was much of relevance to West Indies cricket in what he said.
The game in Sri Lanka – if not the unimaginable trauma of the terrorist attack on the team bus in Lahore which Sangakkara experienced first hand and the effects of the recently ended political violence that cost hundreds of thousands of lives – bears many comparisons to that in the Caribbean. So do the troubling developments of late to which Sangakkara also referred.

Cricket was introduced in that country by the British colonisers, mainly missionaries, and was largely the preserve of the privileged products of…..