Читать книгу Cricket: A Modern Anthology - Jonathan Agnew, Jonathan Agnew - Страница 26

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 answering an application for an injunction and damages from the Packer organisation and three of their contracted players, headed by the infamous Greig. Furthermore, they lost the case with costs, some quarter of a million pounds. As a Guardian leader put it, ‘Mr Kerry Packer may be a bounder and a cad. But he is a legal bounder and a High-Court-sanctified cad.’

To rub salt in establishment wounds, Richie Benaud, who emerged as the brains behind Packer’s scheme, announced that it would not be played under MCC laws, which he had the temerity to call mere ‘rules’, and preparations gleefully began for World Series Cricket (WSC). Furthermore, it was evident that some counties were more concerned to retain the crowd-pulling power of their overseas players than to uphold TCCB dignity. Sussex expressed relief that they were not to be deprived of the services of Greig, Snow and Imran Khan, the Pakistani star. Gloucestershire’s treasurer likewise declared himself ‘ticked pink’ that Mike Procter and Zaheer Abbas would be staying. The Hampshire captain, R. M. C. Gilliat, of Charterhouse and Oxford University, said it was ‘good news for Hampshire cricket’. There was, of course, much huffing and puffing from choleric upholders of tradition, but as the TCCB made no move to appeal against the judgment there was little they could do but seethe.

Loyalist indignation was further aroused when Sussex declined to follow England’s lead, and renewed Greig’s captaincy for the 1978 season. (Nottinghamshire proposed and Lancashire seconded a motion to expel Sussex from the championship.) Kent followed a more politically correct line when they removed Asif Iqbal as captain, but they were careful not to try to dispense with his services as a player. All but the fiercest accepted that the counties had little choice but to honour existing contracts with the ‘rebels’ (though it was assumed that it would be a different story a year later: the judgment had said nothing about renewing contracts). Warwickshire took a similar line. Stiff upper lips were de rigueur and crossed fingers were hidden under board-room tables.

Two things saved the bacon, if not entirely the face, of officialdom. First, World Series Cricket was not the immediate runaway success Packer had predicted, for although it attracted television audiences of a sort, and floodlit matches were a great novelty, the jazzed-up proceedings did not seem to stir up any great concern for who won or lost. Second, the assault on the citadel had led to some rallying round amongst lovers of the authorised version. The TCCB landed £1 million sponsorship from Cornhill Insurance for the Test matches. Fees went up from £3,000 to £5,000 (plus winning bonuses) for tours and from £200 to £1,000 for each home match. Players were thus given pause before they rushed to sign for Packer, and some English players of a certain age or temperament saw this as an opportunity to thin the ranks of overseas players on the county scene, which they now dominated. Personal ambitions and old feuds came into play.

World Series Cricket put a further twist in the ravelled skein of Geoffrey Boycott’s fortunes. Not everyone was as pleased as Wisden with the choice of Mike Brearley, the Middlesex captain, to replace the alien Greig. Sceptics who thought his batting below standard also pointed out that he had not spoken out against the Packer ‘circus’, and hinted darkly that the only reason he hadn’t actually joined them was because he wasn’t good enough to be made an offer: Boycott, by contrast, had been amongst the first to be invited but had ostentatiously refused. Instead he had offered his services to England in her hour of need, and had scored his hundredth century on his home ground, as England took advantage of Australia’s greater disarray to put it across them in that summer’s Tests.

The Cricketers’ Association had members on both sides of the argument – which essentially was whether Packer’s intervention was likely to benefit all cricketers or would merely further widen the gap between the stars’ pay and that of the rest. At the time the basic pay of the 150 or so capped English players averaged about £2,600 a season, rising to perhaps £3,000 with bonuses. Test players averaged nearer £5,000, which was the normal minimum for overseas stars, some of whom commanded £10,000 or more, and the immediate effect of World Series Cricket was to increase the disparities. Boycott further developed his role as champion of the loyalist cause in Pakistan in the winter of 1977–8. When the Pakistan Board of Control lost their nerve and proposed to select three Packer players, Boycott, as acting captain, led a dressing-room revolt.

This, without helping intra-ICC relations, was a setback to the rebels’ hopes of breaking up the fragile alliance. Greig vented his spleen in the Sydney Sun, claiming that Boycott had had a special reason to fear the return of the Pakistan rebels – the pace of Imran Khan. Greig was suspended by the TCCB for breaking his contract and Sussex dolefully dismissed him as captain and ‘allowed him to go’ during the year. As ICC’s united front began to crumble under pressure from West Indies and Pakistan, neither of whom could afford to adopt high moral principles, discussions began with WSC, who were going to greater and greater lengths to try to drum up interest, notably fast bowling of such ferocity that helmets ceased to be regarded as wimpish. ‘Roller-ball cricket’, traditionalists called it.

Neither side was yet ready to concede, but cynics were already predicting that money would have the last word. When John Arlott, president of the Cricketers’ Association, reported in August that ICC had made a ‘considerable advance towards accommodation’ with Packer, the writing was already on the wall. Kent announced that they would re-sign their Packer players for 1979 on the grounds that if they didn’t other counties would. And when Warwickshire announced shortly afterwards that, in view of a letter from the other players, they did not propose to renew Dennis Amiss’s contract, it caused a great furore amongst the members, for Amiss had had his best season ever for the club: ‘Why should we suffer when Kent don’t intend to?’ the dissidents asked. But when they asked for a special meeting, arranged for late September, Amiss himself asked for it to be called off, advised, apparently, by the Cricketers’ Association, who were confident that a settlement would be reached during the winter.

Little more needs to be said about this ignoble episode in the affairs of the noble game as the saga lurched towards the inevitable surrender by the ICC. English disapproval of Packer was alloyed somewhat at the outset by the fact that his impact was greatest in Australia, whose Test teams dwindled into insignificance as a result. Conversely, though the Australian Board made war-like noises, the Australian public made it clear that, while not everyone liked the frenetic WSC approach, they certainly were not going to pay to see their reserves trampled on by the Poms. The English public, meanwhile, became relaxed enough in their unaccustomed supremacy over the old enemy to indulge in a nostalgic North v. South, Gentlemen v. Players debate about the claims of Boycott and Brearley to the captaincy. One side followed the lead of John Woodcock of The Times, who backed the Middlesex captain despite an average of under 20 in his previous twelve Test matches – ‘because England are at ease under Brearley and play the better for being so’. A diametrically opposed minority view was expressed by Albert Hunt, a Bradford contributor to New Society: the north-country ‘professional’ Boycott, having swallowed his pride and gone out to tour Australia under Brearley, had been unchivalrously denied the opportunity to practise at a crucial stage in the tour by the Cambridge ‘amateurs’ Brearley and the manager, Doug Insole.

This unique reversal of roles may indeed have affected Boycott’s performances. So also may his dismissal as Yorkshire’s captain two days after the death of his beloved mother and a couple of weeks before the tour began. Boycott himself even blamed his personal troubles for his deplorable outburst against one of the umpires, whom he called a cheat when he gave him out. Anyway Boycott was glad to get the tour over and returned home, intent on pressing hard for a ban on Packer players at the Cricketers’ Association meeting in April 1979. This was expected to be a stormy affair, but it turned out to be an anti-climax, for the members were advised to take no decisions but to await developments. By the end of the month it was all over: the Australian Board had done a deal, conceding Packer’s exclusive television rights, and the wind went out of loyalist sails with a rush.

From A Social History of English Cricket, 1999