| | Music | 00:00 |
| Boys Town kids dancing | Byrne: It’s breakin’ up day at Boys Town, the inner- club in Kingston where poor young Jamaicans come to make good. An oasis surrounded by the mean streets of Trenchtown, Boys Town is part school, part training centre. It’s also the home of West Indies cricket. | 00:10 |
| | But the club that bred champions is these days - like the Windies team itself - struggling to survive. | 00:36 |
| Boys Town Cricket pitch | The Boys Town cricket pitch was once close to holy ground. Young Frank Worrall got his start here, as did Lindel Wright, a Boys Town grad who manages the Jamaican cricket team. | 00:52 |
| Byrne with Lindel Wright | Wright: Let me welcome you to Boys Town and Trenchtown in particular. | 01:05 |
| | Byrne: Thank you, thank you very much. | |
| | Byrne: Now a neglected dustbowl, the Boys Town pitch symbolises what’s happened to West Indies cricket. The rot at the top starts at the very bottom. | 01:09 |
| | Byrne: : You have to admit that it is not in great condition, is it? | |
| | Wright: No, it is not. We are trying to rehabilitate the grounds, but certainly there is a lack of funds. | |
| Cricket training in nets | Byrne: They need money, too, to invest in the next generation of Calypso cricketers, like 12-year old Marcus Keating. | 01:34 |
| | Coach: Good length, all right. When the ball is pitched up like that. what can he do. He can drive it. Right. | 01:42 |
| | Byrne: Like many of the Boys Town lads, Marcus is as keen as mustard, leaving home at four in the morning to make training. | |
| Marcus Keating | Marcus: West Indies is my favourite team and Brian Lara is my best batsman. Byrne: : Is he your hero? Marcus: Yes. | 01:57 |
| Cricket training in nets | Byrne: But all the enthusiasm in the world can’t make up for the lack of grassroots funding and facilities. Nor for years of bad management by the West Indies cricketing authorities themselves. Loyal Lindel Wright puts the allegation politely. | 02:15 |
| Wright | Wright: Well, from my point of view, I think that when we were winning in the 80’s the necessary planning wasn’t put in place. We thought things would fall in place with natural ability. | 02:32 |
| | Byrne: Others are more brutal. | |
| Crosskill Super: Simon Crosskill Sports Commentator | Crosskill: Huge charge of complacency against previous boards. Not even complacency, downright negligence is the charge that you would level against the boards. | 01:02 |
| | We just sat there and expected the conveyor belt to continue to bring fast bowler after fast bowler along and it stopped. And when it stopped everyone was caught with their pants down. Nobody knew -- what's happening here? | |
| Televised West Indies Test match | Music | |
| | Byrne: The wags have called it the collapso of the Calypso -- and collapse the West Indies have. In the 80’s and early 90’s the Windies were the kingpins of world cricket. | 03:22 |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: Legendary batsmen, like Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd. | |
| | And bowlers so fast, so aggressive, they made strong men quake. Garner, Holding , Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh -- apart from the pace, there were so damn many of them! All gone. | |
| | And the Windies just keep on losing -- this time in Antigua, getting drubbed by the South Africans. | 04:04 |
| Yelling man in bar | Yelling man: Losing, losing, losing, losing spirit. No spirit. That’s what we need in our country. Leaders that can challenge the youth there. So get up now, you. | |
| | Byrne: So where ARE the new stars. Coming up slowly. | 04:28 |
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| College cricket match | Byrne: It’s a very big day for schoolboy champions, Kingston College. | 04:38 |
| | The final is underway, and the Kingston team is chasing runs. And yes, this is the name of their home field -- Echoes of a Glorious Past. | |
| | Though they’re struggling today. In fact, according to Jamaica’s leading sports commentator, Simon Crosskill, cricket at this level has been struggling for 15 years. | 04:59 |
| Crosskill | Crosskill: Back then we were getting good cricketers coming through the school system. I don’t think that is the case now, probably even evidenced by this match, which is a final where we’ve already seen one team bowled out for under 250 and the other one struggling at under 100 for four wickets. | 05:13 |
| Yelling Man in bar | Yelling Man: We are champions. Come on say it. Man: When? Yelling Man: Now, champions. | 05:28 |
| | Byrne: But while the former champions struggle there’s a new sport taking their place, a new breed of heroes wearing their mantle. In the land of Bob Marley they call themselves the Reggae Boyz. | |
| Soccer match | Music | |
| | Byrne: The rise of the Reggae Boyz is a story so good, so unlikely, that Jamaicans are still pinching themselves. | 06:06 |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: An extraordinary campaign which has taken them from rags to riches, to the pride of their small Caribbean nation. | |
| | Music | |
| Televised Soccer match | Byrne: In 1994, Jamaican soccer was nowhere. By 1998 they were on the verge of qualifying for soccer’s biggest event -- the finals of the World Cup. | 06:37 |
| | The crucial match was against Mexico, in front of a home town crowd. No one kicked a goal, but the Reggae Boyz did score their place in the finals. For the first time, they – and Jamaican soccer -- were contenders. | |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: Peter Cargill now helps coach the Reggae Boyz. Back then he was a player, and remembers the team’s humble beginnings. | 07:20 |
| Peter Cargill | Cargill: We had nothing, we had nothing. The fields we played on, where we trained, stones, you know they were nothing. The coach maybe had a friend who would bring some ice and another friend who would bring some oranges and that is where we were at. | 07:29 |
| Soccer training | Byrne: What changed everything was the arrival of a former army captain -- one Captain Horace Burrell. | |
| Burrell Super: Captain Horace Burrell Club President | Burrell: Good God, the public they were so excited, they were so proud of their team that they started to attend the games. | 08:00 |
| | Based on the amount of money we had garnered in the kitty from gate receipts, we were now able to pay the players a salary and we said to them, we won’t allow you to work. | |
| Crosskill | Crosskill: The rise has been phenomenal. It’s seven years that we’ve gone from absolute no-hopers -- and I mean in this region, I don’t mean in the whole world stage -- but in this region, we have gone from a team that couldn’t organize to make this challenge to one that is expected to qualify every time now. | 08:22 |
| | Byrne: : And that really was Captain Burrell? | |
| | Crosskill: That is almost solely down to him and his driving force and getting the right people around him and going off to Brazil to get that coach. | |
| Soccer training | Byrne: First one Brazilian, then a whole conga line of them -- the latest to take the Boyz in hand, coach Clovis de Oliveira. | 08:59 |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: The flamboyant Brazilian style brings out the best in the Boyz – especially young ones like Chavar Thomas. | |
| | Now 19, Chavar comes from a family of cricketers, but he still vividly remembers the day Jamaica qualified for the World Cup –how it changed his life. | 09:26 |
| Chavar Thomas | Chavar: When Jamaica qualified I was in the program then but in the under 17 level. And right there and then I saw a future for the younger guys, including myself. | 09:40 |
| | What it meant to me, this is what is going to make us earn our money. This is what we’re going to do for a career. That’s what I keep seeing at the end of the tunnel. | |
| Soccer training | Byrne: For a poor young boy in downtown Kingston playing for the West Indies was more than a dream, it was an escape route to a better life. But the route now runs not from the cricket pitch but from the soccer field. | 10:08 |
| Cargill | Cargill: It is another avenue for the boys from the ghetto, for my son, for other people’s children, to look another way out of poverty, you know, and it’s very important for me because I was one of the poor ones too, and football lifted me out of the ghetto. | 10:24 |
| | Music | |
| Arnett Gardens | Byrne: Chavar Thomas grew up here in Arnett Gardens, an inner city suburb as tough and poor as Trenchtown. He still lives here. | |
| | After working out with the Reggae Boyz he heads for home, and a hero's welcome. | |
| | : So, these are my friends, you know. | |
| | Music | |
| Byrne & Chavar | Byrne: You’ve been two days away and this is the welcome home? Chavar: Yeah. | |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: But perhaps the most excited to see Chavar is his Dad, George. | |
| | Byrne: You must be very, very proud of your son. Dad: Overwhelming. Byrne: Did you have any idea? Dad: It's coming from far, far, far. Yes. It makes me feel as if I’m alive at all times. | |
| | Dad: See him there. He’s the champ, man. He’s the champ. I’m telling you. That guy let me feel on top, just like the sun shining down. That’s the man. | 11:59 |
| Chavar | Chavar: Trust me, it means a lot. It’s endless. To them when you are on TV, everybody say he is from our community, I know him. Even old friends from high school, it means a lot to them, just knowing that they know you, they have spoken to you, been among you, grown up with you. It means a whole lot. Loads. | |
| Jamaican beach | Music | |
| | Byrne: The rise of the Reggae Boyz is far more than a sporting conquest, it’s a cultural one as well. Gone are the days of beach cricket. In its place – what else? | 12:52 |
| | Behind the sea change, Simon Crosskill believes, is the overwhelming presence of American satellite TV and the lifestyle it promotes. | |
| Crosskill | Crosskill: It’s the American way, it’s the bold and the beautiful, its glitz and glamour, and they want that glitz and glamour and it doesn’t matter if the guy is inner city or up in the hills fairly affluent. What they want is that lifestyle. | 13:22 |
| Reggae boyz in gym | Byrne: Final preparation for the big match – Honduras versus Jamaica – in just a few days time. Another step in the long march to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. Can the Reggae Boyz do it again? | |
| Reggae boyz on TV | Jamaican anthem | 14:00 |
| | Commentator | 14:20 |
| | Byrne: On the day, the stands are packed at Kingston Oval. And when the Reggae Boyz score… | |
| | Cheering | |
| | Commentator: He's scored! Jamaica lead one nil… the second one went into the net, and the Jamaicans celebrate! | |
| Burrell | Burrell: I say football is the future of the world. Football, as far as I’m concerned, is the most popular sport in the world and the statisticians will tell you that. There is no doubt at all about that. | 14:50 |
| | Music | |
| TV Sports show | Presenter: Welcome back to Eye on Sport here in TVJ. | |
| | Byrne: Simon Crosskill agrees – though reluctantly. Test cricket is his first love, but in the West Indies, he fears, it’s a dying sport. | |
| Crosskill | Crosskill: Whether test cricket can survive here, let alone the world, I am not entirely convinced. I have my doubts. I’m not as certain about it as I am about Jamaica continuing to grow in football, or one-day cricket becoming the main source of cricket in the Caribbean. I am not entirely convinced that test cricket the West Indian way will survive. | 15:23 |
| Televised Test Match | Commentator | |
| | Byrne: And what a great way it was. Unforgettable. Inspirational. And, at least some believe, renewable. | 15:54 |
| | Wright: In time we will rise again just like the Phoenix from the ashes. | |
| | Byrne: You absolutely believe that you will be like the Phoenix. In the ashes now, but you will rise. | |
| Wright | Wright: I think so. I strongly believe that, that West Indies cricket will rise again. | 16:15 |
| Soccer traing | Music | |
| | Byrne: Of course there is no West Indies soccer -- it’s a national thing, Jamaica’s own, which makes it all the more potent. | |
| | Music | |
| | Byrne: And so the youngsters trail after Chavar Thomas, the poor boy from Arnett Gardens who now plays for his country. He’s someone. He’s a Reggae Boy. | 16:45 |
| | Music | |
| Credits: | Jamaica SoccerReporter: Jennifer Byrne Camera: David Martin Editor: Garth Thomas Producer: Dugald Maudsley | 17:02 |