E-Paper
The lull after the storm
Post-Packer ripples and the fact that, for many, one-day cricket was still the bastard offspring, took something away from the event.
SUMMERTIME, AND the living was well, decidedly uneasy. Maggie Thatcher, champion of the Me Generation, scourge of society, had just become the first British Prime Minister to enter No. 10 Downing St without the aid of an Adam’s apple.
Cricket’s own revolution, meanwhile, was getting up a head of steam amid seething resentment of the sort that invariably accompanies major social upheaval. Petty, pusillanimous and self-deluding, not to say self-defeating.
A few weeks before the 1979 World Cup announced itself with undetectable fanfare and an apologetic air, the rancorous, often rancid war between Kerry Packer and the game’s self-styled custodians had ended in a truce, if not outright peace.
Sportsmen had started to assert their rights: The 1973 Wimbledon championships had been ruined by a players’ strike; three years later, baseball finally banished feudalism, ditching the reserve clause that made sluggers and shortstops little more than chattels, endorsing free agency.
Now it was the turn of their spiritual cousins. Having displayed a willingness to put family and pension before nation and flag, cricketers had been emancipated (albeit to a lesser extent than we imagined at the time). The game, moreover, was about to venture, however gingerly, into the 20th century.
Packer was both feared and reviled. The Australian magnate represented the aggressive future cricket that mandarins were doing their level best to keep at bay. Already banned from Tests for accepting Packer’s devious dollars, alongside dozens more of the finest contemporary exponents of flannelled tomfoolery, John Snow (Sussex) and Mike Procter (Gloucestershire) were threatened with the sack by county employers. Bravely instituting proceedings for restraint of trade, they won their day in the High Court, unexpectedly but deservedly and refreshingly so.
In March 1979, having achieved his prime objective — securing exclusive Test rights for his Channel 9 TV network — Packer hauled down the big top and closed his so-called circus. It had lasted two years. Two years of legal wrangles, blazing rows, broken friendships and technicolour cricket packaged expressly for the small screen — and profitably so. Two trailblazing seasons wherein he and his minions dabbled with such seemingly daft notions as floodlights, coloured kits, white balls, hot-housed pitches and wall-to-wall cameras.
None of which, needless to add, was remotely close to being embraced by the organisers of the second Cup. Making deals with the devil was one thing. Being seen to follow his lead? Wash your mouth out.
The second World Cup, staged once more in England, should have been the best of the seven to date. A remarkable number of remarkable careers were at their zenith, or approaching such, or hinting at wonders to come. For the past two winters, because of Packer — or because their official paymasters thought they could carry on paying them insulting wages for ever and a day — most plied their trade in the shadows.
Theoretically, the timely end of World Series Cricket ought to have ensured the eight-team event was adorned by their presence. In practice, to the detriment of the tournament’s competitiveness and credibility, the scars, predictably, ran deep.
The West Indies, quite happy to do business with Packer, welcomed back Lloyd, Richards, Roberts et al; vastly better resourced and hence more than adequately equipped to resist immediate forgiveness, England and Australia resolved to maintain the exclusion zone.
The hosts were not excessively depleted: although Derek Underwood and Alan Knott would both have graced the tournament, the sell-by dates of Snow, Dennis Amiss and Tony Greig had expired.
The Australian party, conversely, was riddled with gaping holes: No Lillee, no Marsh, no Walters, no Mallett; not even a single Chappell.
Not that the deprivations stopped there. Notwithstanding Premier John Vorster’s recent resignation over a slush fund scandal, apartheid was still firmly on the statute books; again South Africa’s invitation went astray. Ever keen to persuade its readers that sport and politics should have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, Wisden called it “a shame”. The only pity was that Procter, Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock would never strut their stirring stuff in a World Cup.
Mind you, it would be fanciful in the extreme to suggest that the World Cup had attained the exalted status it enjoys now, much less the commercial leverage. The foul weather didn’t help. That only three games spilled into a second day was truly a miracle of water-into-wine proportions.
Inevitably, pitches seamed and totals dived: Only once in the group stages did a side reach 250. Yet the absence of so many box-office draws also contributed to the droop in aggregate attendance — from 1975’s 160,000 to 132,000.
Again, for many, one-day cricket was still the bastard offspring, a perennial subject of snooty derision — all those horrid pyjama parties and shabby Sunday slogs.
Still, at least the sell-out opener at Lord’s went entirely, almost embarrassingly, to plan. Despite losing the winter’s one-day series Down Under, England sauntered past Australia’s paltry 159.
Bowling in a cap and looking rather cute, Geoff Boycott, improbably, emerged with the best figures, two for 15, tipping enough salt into the wound to satisfy the productivity demands of the greediest Siberian mine-owner. To complete the surreal picture, he finished proceedings with more wickets than runs. The new all-rounder would beguile plenty of batsmen — and, fatally, the selectors.
Thriving under the sagacious captaincy of Mike Brearley, invigorated by the youthful vroom of Ian Botham, Graham Gooch and David Gower, deluded by a host of easy wins against Packerised opposition, England were in a confident mood.
Prohibitively favoured to retain the trophy, the West Indies began irresistibly, disposing of India by nine wickets. Desmond Haynes had replaced Roy Fredericks as Gordon Greenidge’s opening partner but the transition had been seamless.
More tellingly, while Keith Boyce and Vanburn Holder had gone, the pace attack was twice as intimidating as it had been four years earlier, what with Andy Roberts now abetted by Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft.
Mark Burgess’s Kiwis bothered them briefly, Richard Hadlee in particular, but went down by 32 runs; Lloyd’s marauders topped Group B.
With Canada proving every bit as feeble as feared — England whisked them out for 45, still the WC nadir — it was not until match eight that we were blessed with an intriguing contest. On a Headingley pitch brimming, typically, with juice and spite, England struggled to 165-9 but still shaded Pakistan.
Mike Hendrick’s spell of four for three in eight balls sent Asif Iqbal’s side spiralling to 34 for six before Imran Khan and Asif stretched the debate to the wire; Hendrick settled it with a gymnastic catch, the final margin 14 runs, the host nation’s nerves frayed and fried.
Having beaten Australia, Pakistan still made it to the semis, where they gave the West Indies a fearful fright.
Chasing 294, Majid Khan and Zaheer Abbas added 166 for the second wicket in 36 overs, treating Roberts and Garner with disdain. Lloyd then brought back Croft, who knocked off Zaheer, Majid and Javed Miandad within the space of two overs. The 43-run margin belied the tension.
Up until tea, the final was a cracker. Reduced to 99 for four, the West Indies recovered with an assurance bordering on the bodacious, inspired by one of their lesser mortals.
When Collis King, a dainty-looking all-rounder, joined Richards, little was expected. Instead, of the 139 runs the pair clouted in an hour and a quarter of unfettered mayhem, this veritable King-for-a-day whomped 86.
Packing their XI with seven batsmen to offset the menace of Roberts and Co, trusting that Boycott would continue to make batsmen laugh themselves to distraction, England had gone in a bowler light and paid a hefty price: that composite fifth — (Boycott, Gooch and Wayne Larkins) yielded 86 in 12 overs. Richards forged to a brutal, unbeaten century, concluding the innings with a six: the generation’s most dominant batsman in his unstoppable pomp.
Set 287, England began promisingly, although the time it took openers Brearley and Boycott to add 129 meant that just 22 overs remained in which to acquire the other 158. The denouement was sudden and shattering. Gooch picked up the pace but Garner’s fiendish yorker triggered the final ignominious tumble: Big Bird, all six-foot eight of him, claimed five victims in 11 balls as the last eight wickets fell for 11 runs.
As a foretaste of the way cricket’s pendulum would swing post-Packer, it was more than a bit frightening.
And what of India? Evidence of any inclination to grasp the principles of the compressed game was skimpy. It was hard not to suspect that the prejudices of administrators in Calcutta and Bombay echoed those of their snobby English counterparts. For all the resplendent and multifarious talents of Messrs Gavaskar, Vishwanath, Vengsarkar, Kapil and Amarnath (M), and the still-flickering torches of Bedi and Venkat, they were humiliated.
In the last group game at Old Trafford, a strictly academic exercise, Lanka rammed home the unpalatable message, beating them by 47 runs: the Cup’s first true act of cock-snooking irreverence. To classify it as giant-killing would flatter the victims.
(The author is cricket correspondent with the Financial Times, London).
