The arrival of West Indies for this summer’s Test series in England is not the first time that bright young people from the Caribbean have travelled across the Atlantic to bail out the country during an hour of need.
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It may be for the financial benefit of English cricket, rather than a nation on its knees after a bloody world war, but there is a parallel to be drawn with Jason Holder’s tourists and those aboard the Empire Windrush in 1948 – as well as a stirring anthem that connects the two generations.
Rally ‘Round the West Indies was released in 1987 – before being officially adopted as the team’s “national” anthem 12 years later – and its composer, David Rudder, was an apprentice to one of the ship’s more famous passengers in Aldwyn Roberts or, to give his stage name, Lord Kitchener.
Already a famed performer when he disembarked at Tilbury Dock and gave the Pathé news reporter a rendition of London is the Place for Me, Kitchener spent the next 14 years chronicling the life and times of the new West Indian immigrants (as well as plenty of cricket) through his music.
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