If you want to get a sense of what lies behind the continuing successes of today’s Jamaican sprinters, this documentary is as good a place to start as anywhere. Documentaries on sport may be informative but are invariably dull and a little predictable. Fire in Babylon is anything but dull. In fact, it is wholly uplifting, and must be a candidate for one of the best sporting documentaries ever made. The history of the all-conquering West Indian cricket team of the 70’s and 80’s, set to a mesmerising reggae soundtrack, brings back to life the history of one of the greatest sporting teams in the history of team sport.

But it does much more than that. You don’t need to be a cricket enthusiast to get a real buzz out of this documentary. Anyone with a sense of history, a sense of social justice, or just a sense of the under-dog biting back, will love every minute of this compelling story. For Fire in Babylon is not only the story of the super-charged West Indian cricket team, but an integral part of a much larger story; the story of the anti-colonial, anti racist struggles that were taking place across the globe at that time. From the civil rights struggles in the US through to the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa and all the other anti-colonial struggles taking place at that time, what was happening on the world’s cricket pitches was very much part of the unfolding story for, in the words of Peter Tosh, ‘equal rights and justice’.

The film opens with a collage of defining comments from some of the key protagonists; Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Holding and a host of West Indian luminaries. Cricket, it was explained, was used as one of the instruments of colonialism and cricket came to be a way of turning a long and painful experience against those who had opposed us. The collective term for those centuries of colonial oppression was Babylon, a term much used by the emerging Jamaican reggae stars like Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. References were made to the Black Power movement then exploding into life in North American cities. West Indian cricket became yet one more expression of the anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles coming to boiling point across the globe. Speaker after speaker talked of cricket as a means of restoring black dignity after the horrors and indignities of slavery and white colonial oppression. As one team member put it; ‘we don’t want crumbs anymore, we want the whole loaf’.

Throughout the commentary references were made to other black icons; Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and the victorious US Black Olympians. Significant points were made about the absolute control that wealthy white men had over the West Indian cricket board and the fact that, up to the 1960’s a white man had always been the captain of the Caribbean cricket teams. With Clive Lloyd as the new captain, a whole new consciousness started to pervade the team. Racism was going to be defeated on the playing fields. Footage of Bob Marley singing, Get Up, Stand Up’, set the whole cricketing thing in the wider context.

Five Test tours were given prominence in the narrative: the 1975 Test series in Australia where the West Indies, amidst endemic racism and the Aussie fast bowlers, were duly trounced; the 1976 visit of India to the West Indies, where the introduction of West Indies own fast bowlers gave Clive Lloyds team its first real taste of victory; the 1976 tour of England the return 1979 tour of Oz where the previous humiliations were avenged; and finally the 1984 tour of Britain where the West Indies swept all before them beating their old colonial masters in a five-nil ‘Blackwash’.

When Tony Greig, the former South African and then England captain, had publicly boasted that he would make the West Indian team ‘grovel’, it had the effect of galvanising the Windies in a way that nothing else could. It was, as events transpired, the English cricket world that would be forced to grovel.

The role of the British press came in for examination. When the Australians had hitherto used their fast bowlers as a near lethal weapon against their opponents in the 1970’s little was said. Whereas, when the West Indies emulated this tactic, with even greater effect, the British press rushed to accuse the West Indies of destroying the game: double standards that could only be put down to a lingering colonial mentality.

Another aspect of the colonial control of West Indian cricket was highlighted; that of the pitiful remuneration that the West Indian players received compared to their British and Australian counterparts. It took the intervention of Australian businessman, Kerry Packer, and his World Cricket series, to bring matters to a head. The white controlled West Indian Cricket Board attempted to ban those players who took up the lucrative World Series offer, but the protests back home were so vociferous that the West Indian Cricket board eventually capitulated.

A major controversy exploded onto the scene when the Apartheid regime in South Africa attempted to break the international boycott of South African sport by offering huge payments for a West Indian team to play in the pariah state. Sadly some of the stars of the all conquering West Indies team could not resist the blood money. Significantly, Viv Richards and most of his team did take a principled stand. Those that did go were duly vilified by the majority of West Indians.

By the end of the film we are left with some staggering images and some equally staggering statistics. The West Indies remained unbeaten for ten years and did not lose a test series for an unbelievable fifteen years. Whether those glory days will ever return is an open question but the fairytale of West Indian sporting achievements continues with Usain Bolt and his squad of fellow sprinters. From the fastest bowlers on the planet to the fastest sprinters this is a story that just keeps on running.