Something to watch tonight: Thursday 19 September

Fire in Babylon (Riley, 2010)

One of the most surprising developments in my life over the last few years is my decreasing level of interest in watching cricket.

I look back on how I organised my summers as if that was a different person. Plans would be made around the World Series Cricket schedule. The Boxing Day test at Wellington’s Basin Reserve was a ritual for the few years that New Zealand Cricket thought it was worth scheduling.

One of the highlights of my ticketing career was working as a supervisor for the test match in February 1997, handing out the complimentary tickets to a visiting England team that included Nasser Hussain and Alec Stewart, captained by Michael Atherton.

New Zealand were woeful in that game. It would be Lee Germon’s final game as captain, replaced for the third test by Stephen Fleming, a move that would be the first step in a wonderful renaissance and the beginning of my favourite period of cricket watching.

Even earlier than that, though, I would take annual leave from work so that I could spend all five days at the Basin, usually there waiting for the gates to open each morning. The Basin Reserve had practice wickets on the outfield so you could wander around to the Southern End and stand six feet behind the batsman – far closer than any wicket keeper would to a fast bowler.

In 1987, the West Indies were touring so I got to see Viv Richards in those nets, facing up to his own fiery fast bowlers: Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Michael Holding (whose seemingly effortless action earned him the nickname “Whispering Death”.)

One ball from Holding was slightly too full of length and Richards caressed it back past him with such perfect timing and power that I heard it hit the advertising boards on the opposite side of the ground.

So, back in 2011, a film like Fire in Babylon was always going to be right up my alley:

Friends will know that I occasionally compare Test cricket to Shakespeare (in this analogy One-day cricket is Chekov and T20 is more like Everybody Loves Raymond, but I digress). If I’m right then that period during the late 70s and early 80s – when the West Indies used their punishing battery of fast bowlers to force the rest of the game into a feeble submission – must have been Titus Andronicus. Talk about blood, boy!

The documentary Fire in Babylon, fresh from the Festival, makes an explicit and fascinating link between the explosion of West Indian power on the cricket field and the exchange of colonialism for independence. With the assistance of a reggae soundtrack – the other great example of Caribbean pride – and a combination of vivid still photography and as-it-happened television coverage, Fire in Babylon argues its case extremely well. All too often sports documentaries are dreary things – endless talking heads reminiscing about how much better things were in the good old days. FiB has its share of those but something else as well – a fire in its belly.

But now, to quote Paul Kelly’s 1988 song “Bradman”: “the players all wear colours/the circus is in town”. I have no truck with T20 – a ridiculous game played in endless meaningless tournaments designed to please only broadcast schedules and bookmakers – and the greatest version of the game, test cricket, is now so devalued as to be a shadow of its former self.

The West Indies are now a second-tier cricketing nation and that breaks my heart.

Also reviewed that week in the Capital Times (posted to F&S on this very day in 2011) were Terrence Malick’s masterpiece The Tree of Life (no doubt I’ll feature that here soon), photojournalism drama The Bang Bang Club, Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, Finnish documentary Steam of Life and the Ryan Reynolds/Jason Bateman “comedy” The Change-Up.

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Where to watch Fire in Babylon

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada: Digital rental

Ireland and UK: Not currently available

USA: Streaming on Peacock, Kanopy (via participating libraries) or FreeVee (free with ads)