knew the moment the words were out of his mouth it was a mistake, but he was frustrated at the time by the interviewer, who he felt, if not exactly belittling England, was not giving them the credit they were due going into the series. Of course it would all come back horribly to haunt him.
Sir Derek Birley
By 1975 England had ceased to be the unquestioned leaders in world cricket. It was no longer politically correct to talk about the British Commonwealth and by the same token the International Cricket Conference was somewhat less Anglocentric than of yore. But tradition and prestige still counted for a good deal. MCC might by then be more shadow than substance, but the club still owned what was probably the finest cricket ground in the world. Lord’s was still the place for the great international occasion. It was the obvious place for the Prudential Cup, the first international limited-over tournament, later known as the World Cup. The takings, despite England’s mediocre showing, came to £200,000 and the final between West Indies and Australia was watched by 26,000 people and took a record £66,000.
Australia stayed on after the Cup for the resumption of the bouncer war. Obliged to discard the shell-shocked batsmen of the previous winter, England had to look for coarser-grained but tougher customers. They discovered the kind of hero so beloved of tradition as to be part of the national self-image – the quiet, unassuming chap who stands up to the bully. This was David Steele, a thirty-four-year-old from unfashionable Northamptonshire whose grey hair made him look even more venerable, and who wore glasses. Having long given up hope of being picked for England he found himself having to go in to stop the rot against Lillee and Thomson.
Steele recalled the scene as he walked out at Lord’s:
People were looking at me. I could hear them muttering, ‘Who’s this grey old bugger?’ as I walked past. Tommo stood with his hands on his hips. I said, ‘Good morning, Tommo.’ He said, ‘Bloody hell, who’ve we got here, Groucho Marx?’
Scorning thigh pads and chest-protectors – just a towel or two stuffed in his clothes – Steele made 50 and went on to have a splendid series. That England staved off total disaster that summer also owed much to the courage of John Edrich and the wicket-keeper Alan Knott, and, not least, to the aggressive approach of Tony Greig, who replaced the nice-mannered but ineffectual Scot, Mike Denness, after the first Test.
Denness himself was an emollient successor to Illingworth, whereas Greig, born in South Africa of expatriate parents, represented the return swing of the pendulum. Greig’s appointment aroused dismay amongst English nationalists. This was not generally for his specifically South African connections, which only troubled a handful of liberals. The TCCB’s deep regret at having to cancel the planned 1976–7 tour of South Africa, on account of the Commonwealth leaders’ Gleneagles agreement which excluded South Africa from sporting contests, was probably shared by most cricketers.
The purists’ concern was that Greig, though captain of Sussex, was a carpetbagger, not normally resident in England. That winter, Wisden noted, he had played cricket for Waverley, a Sydney club, for a fee of some £12,000. And when Greig subsequently fell from grace, accused of disloyalty, John Woodcock, the eminent cricket correspondent of The Times, explained to his readers:
What has to be remembered, of course, is that he is an Englishman, not by birth or upbringing, but only by adoption. It is not the same thing as being English through and through.
Greig’s other disadvantages as an England captain – his gamesmanship, his mastery of the art of needling opponents, his violent mood swings, impetuosity and so forth – were presumably also attributable to his insufficient Englishness. However, some, in the summer of 1976, were convinced that his declared intention to make the touring West Indians ‘grovel’ was attributable specifically to his South African background. Certainly the remark enraged the touring captain, Clive Lloyd, and gave added spice to the bowling, as forty-five-year-old Brian Close and thirty-nine-year-old John Edrich joined Steele in the firing line, and Greig confessed himself frightened for the first time in his life. But it was all astonishingly good for business and the TCCB found themselves with a total of £950,000 to share out at the season’s end from their various enterprises. This was an increase even in real terms, a qualification that everyone had to get used to making in those ultra-inflationary times.
Greig, meanwhile, who so far had not won a match as captain, found welcome relief on the tour of India with its slow bowling traditions. Wisden cooed with satisfaction over England’s victory and Greig’s inspired and inspiring leadership. It was also pleased that the Cricket Council had dealt so promptly and conclusively with the accusation that England’s bowlers, Willis and Lever, had been guilty of ball-tampering. They had adopted the unusual practice of sticking gauze strips to their foreheads with vaseline, purportedly to keep the sweat from running into their eyes, but the Indian captain, Bishen Bedi, had complained that they were in fact using the sticky substance to keep the shine on the ball. The Cricket Council, after telephoning the England captain and manager, utterly refuted the foul allegation.
That winter’s tour was, however, to be remembered chiefly for the Centenary Test match, commemorating the anniversary of the first match played on level terms between English and Australian players. More precisely it was remembered for the subsequent discovery that Greig, the England captain, had used the intervals of play to recruit members of his team to the service of Kerry Packer, son of an Australian media tycoon. Packer had tried to negotiate with the Australian Board of Control for the right to televise matches exclusively on his commercial Channel 9, and when they peremptorily refused had decided to run his own international contests, hiring all the teams.
Greig’s sorties on Packer’s behalf were conducted in great secrecy, and no one at Lord’s had any inkling of what was in store. All the talk was of the great news that a sponsor had been found for the county championship: Schweppes were offering £360,000 for three years, a generous sum considering the limited amount of television coverage that could be expected. Even when in April rumours began to circulate that a number of South Africans had signed to play for Packer in an eight-week series in various parts of the world, no one thought much about it. The Australian tourists arrived on schedule, armed with contracts newly negotiated with the ABC (£12,000 a man and a pension scheme, the word was), and old-stagers shook their heads at what things were coming to. Then Packer announced that he had signed thirty-five Test players, including thirteen Australian tourists and four current English players, Greig, Knott, Snow and Underwood.
The TCCB’s response was to relieve Greig of the captaincy, because of the breach of trust, and to call a meeting of the International Cricket Conference (formerly the Imperial Cricket Conference, adapted to accommodate loose cannons like South Africa and Pakistan), where it was agreed that no action be taken for the immediate series, but that afterwards five conditions be imposed on players who contracted to play for Packer. These conditions were not wildly unreasonable, but were paternalistic in the best MCC traditions. However, this soon became academic, for when the ICC met Packer he insisted on his original demand of exclusive television rights, the ABC saw this as blackmail and refused, the ICC stood by them and the trial of strength resumed.
Packer signed another dozen or more players, including two current English Test men, Dennis Amiss and Bob Woolmer, to play what he called ‘Super-cricket’ and what the establishment referred to as a ‘circus’. This was a conscious attempt to relate the Packer scheme to Old Clarke and the All-England XI, which was a horror story told in the best circles about a dastardly plot to wrest the game from MCC’s lawful grasp. In 1866 the happy ending had come when MCC had laid down the conditions on which they would engage the rebels for future matches. In 1977, when the TCCB and ICC tried to do the same, they found themselves in court
