Fire in Babylon
2010 film by Stevan Riley
Fire in Babylon is a 2010 British documentary film about the record-breaking West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s. Featuring stock footage and interviews with several former players and officials, including Colin Croft, Deryck Murray, Joel Garner, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Michael Holding, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and Andy Roberts, the film was written and directed by Stevan Riley and was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary. It was the joint-winner (with Reggae Britannia) of the UNESCO Award at the Jamaica Reggae Film Festival 2011.
Synopsis
The documentary describes the ascension of West Indies cricket from being a team largely composed of highly talented, entertaining, "Calypso Cricketers" to a determined unit that dominated world cricket for almost twenty years.
It begins with an introduction to the West Indies Cricket Team, using interviews with West Indian cricketing greats, and other people closely associated with West Indies cricket. The idea of culturally and politically different Caribbean nations playing under the common banner of the West Indies is described.
The history of cricket in the West Indies is briefly described, such as the appointment of Sir Frank Worrell as the first black man to captain the West Indies Cricket Team, and the emergence of such cricketing greats as Everton Weekes, Learie Constantine, and Sir Garfield Sobers is represented. However talented these individual cricketers were, they were unable to fetch results, resulting in the West Indies being perceived as "Calypso Cricketers", that is, people who were entertaining to watch, but would eventually lose.
This documentary depicts the emergence of a new crop of West Indian cricketers in the 1970s that was eager to shake the tag of Calypso and who could compete on the world stage. Clive Lloyd, appointed as Captain in 1974, is portrayed as a guiding hand, who could steer a young team in the right direction, uniting them for a common cause on the cricket field.
The public source identifies “Fire in Babylon” as 2010 film by Stevan Riley. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fire, Babylon and film.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5451585. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2011 and 1974.
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