but the pitch itself was exposed to the elements. On rest days, however, every effort was made to protect it from the elements, and Pakistan argued that they were entitled to be able to bat on a pitch in the same condition it had been in when stumps were drawn on the Saturday evening.
As it happened, we didn’t get on again. Despite re-marking of the pitch during the final session on day five, the rain returned, and the contest, which had become more political than sporting, was abandoned as a draw and a three-Test series was on its way to a 0–0 stalemate. It was a series which bore few runs for me personally but the news I wanted to hear was delivered during a six-wicket win over Sir Garfield Sobers’s Notts. That match concluded on 30 August, and I celebrated with 116 not out in the one-dayer against Pakistan in Nottingham the very next day.
Preparing for Battle
We felt almost from the moment we arrived that Australia were determined to show they were the better team and that they would avenge that defeat by Illingworth and Co four years earlier. And it is fair to say that we were caught on the hop by their line-up.
For a start, we did not anticipate Dennis Lillee being declared fit, and when he was, on the eve of the series, it undoubtedly gave the Australians a boost. The main thrust of the pre-series talk had been that Lillee was not going to play. He had suffered a serious back injury, spinal fractures that had caused him to be set in plaster from his backside to his shoulders for six whole weeks earlier in the year, and word was he wasn’t going to be ready in time.
With him missing, we really didn’t have anything to fear. Truth was that Australia were a little bit thin on the ground for fast bowlers. Or so we anticipated. They had Gary Gilmour and David Colley, the pairing who opened the bowling for New South Wales against us ahead of the first Test. Both had a couple of caps to their names – Colley’s earned during the 1972 Ashes – while there was a recurring whisper doing the rounds that a chap called Thomson was in the mix too.
We had encountered two blokes of this surname during our four pre-series games – a bit of a beach bum, called Jeff, who sent down some fairly innocuous new-ball fare for Queensland, and who on his Test debut 12 months earlier against Pakistan had, by all accounts, gone around the park, finishing with match figures of nought for 110; and Alan Thomson, otherwise known as Froggy because of the way he sprang to the crease and bowled off the wrong foot, who had featured against England four years earlier when he got involved in a bouncer war with Snow. Because of his experience, we anticipated it would be the latter called up for the opener in Brisbane. But this hardly filled us with fear as his return for Victoria against us a fortnight earlier read 17-0-85-0.
We were hoodwinked, of course, as they wheeled out the man who would no longer be referred to as either Jeff or Thomson from that year forth. Following his selection he was forever known as Thommo and in tandem with Lillee ambushed us right good and proper. When he’d opened the bowling for Queensland against us in that first-class contest, he did no more than amble into the crease, under the express instruction of Australia captain Ian Chappell. He was merely playing to have a good look at us while being careful not to show anything of his true self – so that we didn’t get accustomed to how freakishly fast he could send this ball down at you and would be caught unawares when the serious business began.
Facing up to Thommo was a real challenge not least because of his rather unique bowling action. In modern day cricket you will see batsmen such as Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan muttering to themselves: ‘Watch the ball.’ The television close-ups and slow-motion shots reveal that they mouth those words as the bowler runs up to the crease.
However, occasionally, you come up against bowlers that make it more difficult for you to be able to do that because of slight quirks in their actions. And then there was Thommo, who made it absolutely impossible because he didn’t let you see it at all as he wound up to wang it down. With other people you knew where their hands were going and you could watch the ball all the way because it was visible. But with Thommo you just never saw it because the way he held it, with his body tilted backwards before uncoiling like a gargantuan spring, meant it remained behind him until the last nanosecond. His body shielded this arm that seemed to drag a yard behind the rest of him, and that, allied to the velocity he managed made him doubly difficult to face.
In that most wonderful of fast-bowling combinations, Thommo was the speed merchant, the unrefined paceman. Lillee, although a yard slower than the bowler the world had witnessed in the 1972 Ashes, was quick enough too, but a real artist in comparison to this laidback mop-head that had been plucked from the sticks. Because of his background there were some great tales about the young Thommo’s early days. For example, he didn’t even have a run-up when he first started his professional career, never practised one during net sessions, just shuffled up and slung it down.
So much so that in that first Test at the Gabba, he sent down no-ball after no-ball (13 in the match) which triggered Chappell’s presence on his shoulder as one early over progressed. Clearly struggling to get into a decent stride pattern, Thommo asked his elder: ‘How many paces do I do, skipper?’
‘What do you mean? I’ve no idea. Don’t you know?’
‘Nah, I’ve always walked back to where the tree is at this end – but they’ve cut it down!’
That’s how much of a natural he was. These days fast bowlers carry tape measures among the essential items in their kit bags, mark their initials on the pitch with whitewash to identify their starting point, and do all sorts of other things besides to make sure they set off from the right place. It’s precision. But there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about Thommo.
Make no mistake, with his dander up he was frighteningly quick, and described rather fittingly by one scribe as a one-man sonic boom. Even by fast bowlers’ standards he was pretty raw as a cricketer – a guy who really was from the back of beyond. And in partnership with the recovered Lillee he made us England batsmen feel pretty raw too with regular blows to our bodies. They were a pretty gruesome twosome, who didn’t seem overly bothered whatever the levels of pain they inflicted on opponents. Several of our party had to pay emergency visits to hospital during the six-match series, while I had to undergo a medical check that all was what it should be after an excruciating piece of physical assault in Perth. More of that later.
From my experience, Thommo hardly said a word on the field – I guess with the arsenal he packed in his right shoulder there was no need to – and he is even quieter now. Actually, a little known fact about him is that he slips over to Britain most summers, and lodges with his big mucker Mick Harford, the cricket-daft former professional footballer, while he does the rounds for a few weeks on the after-dinner speaking circuit, then heads back to Queensland and spends the rest of the year chilling out on his boat. You meet some great blokes in cricket and Thommo has to be up there for me. Although I am not so sure I appreciated him as an adversary on that trip 30-odd years ago!
Some suggested we were caught unawares by Australia after two wins and two comfortable draws against the state sides ahead of the first Test. Of course, we were without our own fast bowling nasty Snow, the scourge of the 1970–71 Aussies, and in terms of preparation for games it was nothing like what you might be used to reading about these days.
Let’s just say that fitness was an interesting subject on my only England tour. There were no drills as such for fielding, practice was just day after day of netting. And when we weren’t in the nets, we would be playing one of our many warm-up matches. We had landed in Australia in late October, and were involved in four four-day games between 1 and 25 November. That was 16 days’ cricket out of 25 with all the travelling logistics such a huge country provides in between. It was gruelling work alright, especially for the bowlers as we were still on eight-ball overs under Australian regulations in the early 1970s.
Watching
