Fire in Babylon

The year’s glut of cricket docs continues with an exploration of the hegemony established over the game by a collection of tiny Caribbean islands in the late ’70s. Director Stevan Riley meets legends including Michael Holding and Viv Richards, and explores the racially conscious, militant edge which underpinned this virtuosic team’s achievements.

The film also conflates cricket with Jamaican politics, the problems faced by the West Indian diaspora in the UK and the struggle in South Africa. One minor flaw in the film is its reductive tendency to over-amplify the brutality of the West Indies’ methods; of course, their victories were underwritten by the skull-threatening menace of their fast bowlers but there was no shortage of finesse either. Still, a visceral and evocative film.