With an over remaining in the 2016 World Twenty20 final, you could be forgiven for believing that the West Indies’ fairy tale was over. They required 19 runs to win in six balls, a feat that hasn’t been achieved too often even in the slam-bang format of the game. It was here that Carlos Brathwaite hit four consecutive sixes, which not only won his team their second World T20 title, but also proved that their first one in 2012 was no fluke. With the West Indies winning the women’s title earlier the same day and the Under-19 World Cup a few weeks ago, the cricketing romantics are wondering if this really is the dawn of a new era of world dominance by Darren Sammy and his team? Are we witnessing a repeat of Fire in Babylon?

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The trailer of ‘Fire in Babylon’.

British director Stevan Riley’s 2010 documentary is the fascinating story of how a bunch of cricketers pooled from as many as 15 countries – with different flags, currencies and accents – came together to master a sport taught to them by their colonial rulers. The 87-minute film reveals how a team patronisingly known as “calypso cricketers”, who entertained the crowds with feats of individual brilliance before fading away into defeat, transformed into a squad that beat the world’s best and terrorised them with a brand of aggression and vigour that had never been seen before.

Fire in Babylon is an account of how a squad that had hit rock bottom with a 5-1 defeat to Australia in 1975-’76 went on to be unbeaten in Test matches for over a decade. It explores how captain Clive Lloyd shrewdly built a team around a pace-bowling quartet capable of clocking 90 mph and firebrand batsman Vivian Richards.

The film also intelligently weaves in the political currents in the Caribbean region, which had won independence only in the 1960s, and whose people were finally discovering a sense of black pride. One of the many fascinating bits in Fire in Babylon is the portion in which Lloyd’s men make England captain Tony Grieg – a South African by birth – pay for his remarks of wanting to “make them grovel”. The West Indies ensured that Grieg’s racially loaded remarks, especially at a time when South Africa was in the grips of apartheid, had its consequences...on the field.

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A clip from ‘Fire in Babylon’.

Clips from matches and interviews with, among others, Richards, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Desmond Haynes, play out over a groovy soundtrack of reggae and dub music, including a cameo from Bunny Wailer. Lloyd tells Riley about how he beat the cricketing powerhouses of Australia and England at their own game by scouting and nurturing an arsenal of fast bowlers with the sole aim of knocking down the batsman or the three stumps he was guarding.

One of the mesmerising first-hand accounts is by Holding, who matured from a rookie 20-year-old fast bowler reduced to tears by the Australians to the man known as “Whispering Death.” Vivian Richards explains why he wore a wristband in the colours of the Rastafari movement: “Green for the land of Africa, gold for the wealth that was stripped away, red for the blood that was shed.”

The historical documentary ends before the decline. The West Indies have been languishing at the eighth spot in Test rankings for a major part of the last decade, and aren’t doing any better in the one-day format. However, their resurgence in the T20 version over the last few years, along with the recent Under-19 World Cup win, reminds us that it doesn’t take long for fire to reignite.