REVELATION 2011: FIRE IN BABYLON

As someone who knows diddly about the game of cricket, it is with great relief to see a fire in the belly of Steven Riley’s Fire In Babylon that sets it apart from most sports-docs. In the Carribean, we're told, cricket is more than a pleasant way to spend an afternoon - it is a way of life, and in this documentary, a passionate symbol of revolution. Babylon charts the struggle of the West Indies cricket team of the 70s and 80s to restore national dignity by beating their white oppressors with one of the seemingly harmless tools of British colonization. I say ‘seemingly’ because here, the ball is bowled as much to inflict pain on the batsman as to score points. The balls thrown from the West Indies bowlers have teeth, documented in yellowing stock footage that chronicles the violent clash between ball and man-flesh. The most vicious West Indian bowlers (Colin Croft, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, and Michael Holding) were even dubbed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – yet, as the doc illustrates, they were driven by a relentless national pride: mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Aside from a wonderful opening sequence in which various contemporary West Indies players bowl alongside footage of their 70s and 80s forbearers, the presentation of Babylon is reasonably simple: talking heads, stock footage, Flash-animated newspaper headlines and musical interludes to tie it all together. We see it all exclusively through the eyes of West Indies players and club members – which means the Australians and the English get the bum rap as villains. However it must be said - from Australian bowler Dennis Lillee intending a “military assault on West Indies cricket” for “self-preservation”, to English captain Tony Greig infamously expecting the West Indies team to “grovel” - that both nations play their respective villainous roles quite effectively. By having the advantage of being lithe and fit against fat, balding white men, Riley sets up his West Indies heroes for a glorious reckoning in the last third of the film. Before its all over, Babylon will fall (or as one talking head tells us, “the slaves whip the asses of their masters”), records will be set, and so many more batsmen will get clocked, painfully, in the balls.