AS Guyana entered the festive season and prepared to bid farewell to 2019, the nation was plunged into mourning over the death of one of its iconic sporting legends, Basil Butcher.

Quite understandably, there has been an outpouring of tributes in the traditional media, on social media and wherever Guyanese express their thoughts. Basil Butcher played a sport that has been central to the moulding of the Guyanese and Caribbean civilisation — cricket. As the great Caribbean philosopher CLR James proclaimed, cricket is a game which, for us West Indians, goes beyond the boundary.

Basil Butcher was a hero in an era of Caribbean cricket that produced several heroes. He was a linchpin in the great West Indies teams of the 1960s. The names of the legends of that time are mouthwatering—Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Seymour Nurse, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith, Lance Gibbs, Jackie Hendricks, Joe Solomon and Basil Butcher. Butcher had also played with some of the champions of the previous decade—Frank Worell, Clyde Walcott, Everton weeks, Sonny Ramadin and Alf Valentine; he also played alongside some of the soldiers of the all-conquering team of the 1970s and beyond—Clive Lloyd, Roy Fredericks, Deryck Murray and David Holford.

To understand Basil Butcher’s place in Caribbean cricket history one has to understand the value and significance of the 1960s team. If the 1950s teams were the “Decolonisation Teams” and the 1970s-80s teams were the “Revolutionary Teams”; and the teams of the 1960s were the “Independence Teams.” That was the decade of Caribbean political independence beginning with Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica in 1962. It was that team which confirmed that we were ready for self-government. From the memorable 1960-61 tour to Australia to the end of the decade, the West Indies cricket teams confirmed to the world that we were full human beings with the capacity to match the rest of the world in artistry and human creativity.

It was the decade of the first full-time Black captain when Sir Frank Worrell stood head and shoulders above all other captains across the cricketing world. It was the decade of the greatest cricketer of all time and for all times, Sir Garfield Sobers. It was also the decade when the Caribbean stamped its unique personality on the game—the artistic flamboyance and aggression born out of centuries of resistance and overcoming. It was the era of the Caribbeanisation of a game that was meant to subdue and conquer the Region. It was a time when cricket for the Caribbean meant self-determination.

Through it all, there was Basil Butcher. A son of the working-class from the sugar estate at Port Mourant, he rose to the very top. His mastery of the craft whereby the little village boy with a bat in his hand became a genius was in the first bracket of excellence. Butcher was the first really consistent embodiment of a particular type of West Indian batsmanship—the quiet accumulator around which the other flashing bats amassed the grand totals. Butcher had the flair of the others, but he possessed that aura of stability that is key to the success of all great teams. Larry Gomes, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and now Shai Hope have continued the Basil Butcher legacy.

Butcher played for Guyana at a time when playing for the national team was as significant as playing for the West Indies. Guyana was a powerhouse during the Butcher years; it is no accident that he remained a Guyanese nationalist to the end. Whether it was coaching, culture or politics, he was true to the preservation of the Guyanese identity. His career statistics match those of the best of his contemporaries and in the cricketing world at large. But in the end, it is the humanity that he brought to the game, along with his singular contribution to the success of the collective, that makes him a giant of a cricketer and a champion ambassador and legend of Guyana.