Orville Higgins | That cricket vs football debate

For some reason, the argument is making the rounds again about whether cricket or football was more popular in Jamaica in the 1980s.

I thought I had put this matter to bed on radio years ago. This should really be a one-sided argument in favour of cricket, but some are blinded by the popularity of schoolboy and national league football in the 1980s and run headlong into forming the completely wrong conclusion.

On this issue, the level of public discussion has been largely bereft of high-quality rational analysis. For example one host of a radio sports programme was using a survey done by Chris Dehring to validate the argument that football was more popular then. Dehring's survey asked several questions, one of which got the response that football was more popular with those people who were questioned. The survey would have been a reasonable way to "settle" the argument in favour of football except for one small anomaly. Chris did this survey in 1997! Let me repeat: 1997. How anyone can use a 1997 survey to validate a 1980s trend is simply just beyond me. Let me offer some objectivity, and, dare I say, some intellect to the debate.

Jamaica started attempting to qualify for the football World Cup round about the same time we started competing in regional cricket. That is the mid-1960s. We failed to qualify for all the football World Cups from 1966 to 1982. For the 1982 and 1986 tournaments, the JFF didn't attempt to try. A combination of poorly organised teams and lack of resources were given as the reasons. What was the national response to Jamaica not attempting to qualify for the two World Cups in the 80s? None!

It never created any buzz either on radio or with the common man in the streets. Can you imagine what kind of national furore there would have been if our national cricket team had opted to pull out of the Shell Shield as it was known then? Any objective mind would agree that there would be a great public outcry if our national cricket team had opted not to participate in the highest competition open to them then, rather than the national nonchalance when our football team didn't attempt to qualify for the World Cups then.

At the national level then, the country was more concerned and much more aware of the national cricket team as opposed to the national football team. Jamaica's cricket heroes then- Michael Holding, Jeffrey Dujon, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh and Lawrence Rowe, were by far bigger household names nationally than whoever was on the national football team. The West Indies team was at the peak of its powers, and their exploits were followed by everyone. The two most popular sports teams in Jamaica were the West Indies and Jamaica cricket teams. To suggest that another sport was more popular than cricket then is bordering on lunacy.

Some have been silly enough to point out that it was the success of the 1980s team that got us all interested in cricket. It's an unintelligent way to analyse the thing. Indeed, it is simply not true. Jamaican and Caribbean people were passionate about cricket long before the 1980s.

The stars that we produced in the 1980s were born mostly in the 1950s. They took up cricket as children because that was the most popular sport around them. Lawrence Rowe, before going to South Africa, was the most popular Jamaican sportsman. We were celebrating his achievements and others like Holding from in the 70s.

We were hammered by Australia 5-1 in 1975-76 and Jamaican people then were hurt badly by that series, but it didn't stop the whole nation from being glued to there radios to listen.

We make the mistake of not understanding the popularity of cricket because of what was happening in schoolboy and club football. High school football was always more popular than high school cricket. Premier League football was always more popular than its cricket equivalent, the Senior Cup.

Football at those levels definitely had bigger following. National popularity for cricket was, however, bigger.

You can't judge popularity merely by the size of crowds. There were no crowds following marbles or gigs or kite flying in the 1980s but these were hugely popular pastimes especially in rural Jamaica. There would be more crowds watching schoolboy football than a marble game, but I would venture to say football was no more popular than marbles then.

The other thing that must be taken into consideration is the issue of gender. We must remember that women form roughly half the country's population. In the 1980s if you did a survey of Jamaican women, more of them would be more aware of cricket. Ask Jamaican women in their 50s, 60s and 70s now, who would be young adults in the 1980s, and I guarantee you that more of them were more attuned to cricket. Football may have been attractive to young men in the 1980s but cricket galvanised a whole nation and a greater cross section of the family. Popularity is about what people care about and love. People cared more about cricket results than football.

The term "curry goat" cricket has solidified itself in the Jamaican vernacular. This is simply community cricket without the structure and organisation of football. Cricket in the 1980s was seen as a social pastime, especially in the rural areas, and it never had to be organised the way football did for the masses to take part. To understand this phenomenon you have to understand dominoes in Jamaica. Dominoes is arguably the greatest form of male bonding in Jamaica. All males would have played dominoes at some point. There was, however, no structure, no competition, no huge crowds outside of those who gathered at the bar or shop. Dominoes doesn't carry crowds, but like cricket to Jamaicans in the 1980s it was part of our very social fabric.

So yes, football was popular in the 1980s. I'm even prepared to accept that it was just as popular as cricket in urban Jamaica and in the capitals and buil- up areas of some of the rural parishes. But to the wide cross section of Jamaicans, cricket was what they were more passionate about. Cricket is what kept them glued to their radios at all hours of the day and night.

We produced more world class cricketers than world class footballers in the 1980s for that very reason.