Cricket: A Modern Anthology. Jonathan Agnew

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

TONY GREIG

       David Tossell

       Grovel!

      By the final Saturday of the series, with the temperature topping out at 82 degrees, the great British drought was biting so badly that the Queen had ordered her gardeners to stop watering the grounds at all Royal households. Industry bosses called on the public to use less water, leaving more for factories. Martin Trowbridge of the Chemical Industries Association said, ‘Jobs are at stake. Is it better to have a well-watered flower bed or a pay packet?’

      Such concerns were far from the minds of a cheerful crowd, some of whom took time to settle into their seats behind the bowler’s arm. Once they had, Daniel sent the first ball of the day down the leg side for four byes. The first four off the bat was all-run after Amiss clipped Daniel through mid-on. Woolmer again started carefully, but in Holding’s second over he shuffled across his crease and was beaten by speed, giving Dickie Bird an easy lbw decision.

      Amiss drove well and played confidently off his legs, recalling that ‘they were bowling at leg stump and feeding me’. One square cut looked a little edgy and Holding, generating fearsome pace through the air and off the most docile of wickets, had him groping outside off stump. But then Amiss whipped the ball past leg slip to move to 52.

      David Steele remembers, ‘I had been in about a quarter of an hour when I went down to Dennis and he said, “How am I doing?” I said, “What do you mean, how are you doing? You have got 70 on the board. How am I doing?” He said, “Oh, you are all right.” He had no confidence in himself. He was a man of theory, a man of doubt, but a wonderful player. He was a lovely timer of the ball and when he got in he kept going. He got big scores. With that big step to the off side, he just flicked everything.’

      Amiss and Steele offered an interesting contrast in styles. In comparison to Amiss’s back-foot shuffle, Steele continued to commit to the front foot, leaving him vulnerable when Holding moved the ball away. Steele punished a couple of loose deliveries off the experimental spin of Roy Fredericks and England, having made good progress throughout the morning, took lunch at 137 for 1.

      Confident in his new technique, Amiss, 80 at lunch, felt clear-headed. Instead of the lethargic thoughts he’d harboured at Lord’s, here he occupied the time during Holding’s extended approach to the wicket by reinforcing his action plan. ‘You talk to yourself. You say, “Keep your head still, watch the ball, watch the ball, watch the hand.” You are just devising in your mind what you are going to play. Is it swinging, is it bouncing? Once you have got used to the bounce and pace of the wicket it helps you to mentally prepare for any shot. If you have fast bowlers coming at you from both ends you have not got much time to switch off. You are always under pressure and you have no time to get away from it. You do go through periods when facing fast bowlers can get on top of you, but the better batsmen come through it. I felt mentally strong and my technique was working.’

      Steele began the afternoon by helping a climbing ball from Holding over backward point, repeating the shot next ball. It moved him to 44, but Holding, having switched to the Vauxhall End, pinned him lbw with a ball that broke back. New batsman Chris Balderstone was soon treading Steele’s path back to the pavilion. Holding twice struck him on the pads and induced a rash shot outside the off stump, before putting him out of his misery with a yorker that brushed the inside edge before dismantling the stumps.

      Amiss was undeterred, twice dispatching Roberts through mid-wicket with a circular flourish of the bat. On 96, and after 209 minutes’ batting, he stood one stroke from a century that would complete his courageous return from the precipice of his Test career. He stabbed at a Holding half-volley and