The season had been a real eye-opener. I did a make a fifty and a few good thirties but never kicked on. I spent hours beating myself up, wondering if I was any damn good at the game at all. Dutchy reckons I carried too much of the club on my shoulders—captain, coach, number three batsman, front-line bowler, sightscreen painter. I had just turned twenty so maybe he is right. He adds that had I wanted to come back for the next summer they would have been delighted to have me, which cheers me up no end.
I wish I had known that then. Perhaps I would have gone back to repay their faith. As it was, I decided that Newcastle was not for me. We often say we wish we knew then what we know now. Well, it truly applies to my time with Southern Lakes. I felt I let the club down and thought that if I ever had another crack at Australia, I would commit to making a better job of it.
In the early part of the summer of 1977, the story broke that an Australian television and publishing mogul was hijacking the game. On 13 May that year, Tony Greig, the England captain, was sacked. Greig had signed for Kerry Packer to play in a series of privately arranged and funded matches in Australia that would feature the best players in the world and be televised live on Packer’s network, Channel Nine.
Television was the root and branch of the WSC adventure. Packer had inherited a media empire from his father, Sir Frank, but specifically his heart was in television. He loved sport and sportspeople. It became fundamental to him that the Nine Network should be the home of the world’s greatest sporting events. A couple of things were on his side. In March 1975 colour television came to Australia and the transition from black and white had a huge effect on viewing numbers and advertising revenue. Nine was already strong in news but drama was expensive. Relatively speaking, sport was cheap and, best of all, it was inherent in the Australian lifestyle.
In March 1976, Packer made a play to the Australian Cricket Board (ACB, later Cricket Australia) for the exclusive rights to all Australian cricket but was snubbed. Incandescent, he famously said to the ACB chairman, Bob Parish: ‘There is a little bit of the whore in all of us. What’s your price?’ ‘There isn’t one,’ replied Parish, who stuck with the ABC. Packer then proposed a joint agreement to promote a series of matches over a five-year period, played in January and February each year, that would not clash with existing international schedules. He offered to underwrite the costs. That received a slap in the face too.
Meanwhile, there was growing discontent among the high-profile Australian players, who were unofficial world champions with filmstar status. They played in front of huge houses but were paid peanuts. As Richie Benaud was to say later: ‘We wanted a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.’ Dennis Lillee advocated a series of matches to raise funds for retired players who had nothing to fall back on. Lillee had Austin Robertson, his manager, and John Cornell, a television man well known to Packer, in his camp. The ACB’s attitude was best explained by the secretary Alan Barnes, who said: ‘If you don’t like the pay and conditions, there are plenty of others who will take your place.’ It was much the same in England, where the Test players received £50 a day. Cornell approached Packer to back Lillee’s scheme. Packer told them to hold tight for something on a much bigger scale.
Packer’s first masterstroke was convincing Richie Benaud to guide the development of the product, advise on strategy and work on the telecast. Benaud was authority and Benaud was street cred. Other than Sir Donald Bradman, no man was more powerful or better able to transcend the great divide between Melbourne and London. Better still, he was one of only a very few men to tell it to Kerry as it was. In the weeks leading up to the start of the first season of WSC, Packer made a final plea in London to the International Cricket Conference (later the International Cricket Council, or ICC) for mediation in the rights dispute with the ACB. The ICC refused and he stormed out in disgust, saying to the media, ‘It’s every man for himself, may the devil take the hindmost.’ Benaud was not impressed and fired off a memo to Packer’s henchmen: ‘Please, when you get back to Australia, can we start making love not war. The press since you made the devil comment has been dreadful.’ Benaud’s velvet glove and Packer’s iron fist were a perfect fit.
Then Packer seduced Greig, who was ripe for the plucking. Greig was a good-looking and ambitious 30 year old but, in his own view, just a few failures from being axed as captain of England like so many before him. He wanted good money, a job for life and a low-interest home loan. He got the lot and, in return, Packer told him to hunt down the best cricketers in the world and sign them up.
Greig left for the Caribbean almost immediately, where Clive Lloyd took some persuading. ‘Can we really commit to an untried project,’ wondered Lloyd, ‘and was the risk worth the possible end of our international careers?’ The answer was yes, especially when he was reassured by the news that Benaud was onside. After Lloyd came Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts, among many others. Holding has talked about his sense of disbelief when he was offered US$25,000 to play a season of cricket. ‘I went to the bank with my savings book and in those days it used to be put into a machine that updated the account. When the teller handed it back to me, I stared at it in shock. For the first time in my life there was a comma after the first number!’
Greig then targeted the Pakistanis: Imran Khan, Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad and Asif Iqbal. No problem. Nor with most of the Poms, many of whom were friends and hung on their captain’s every word. Mind you, not all of them agreed for fear of their future in the English professional game. Easier still were the South Africans, who were starved of international cricket and ravenous at the opportunity. Ten minutes over a Castle Lager was good enough for Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Mike Procter, Eddie Barlow and Clive Rice.
There was a late threat to South African involvement when a key clause in the Commonwealth Gleneagles Agreement that discouraged sporting contact with South Africa was invoked by Michael Manley, the prime minister of Jamaica. Malcolm Fraser, the Australian prime minister, was obliged to ban the South Africans from entering Australia until Packer found a loophole that allowed freedom of movement to any South African player with a UK county cricket contract. Fraser, more wary of Packer than Manley, relented. This meant that only Pollock, who had not played county cricket, missed out. In general, Fraser went out of his way to accommodate Packer, once allowing Greig—back from a recruitment foray—into the country without his lost passport. That’s power.
Lillee, Cornell and Robertson had the Australians they needed and then some. The only hiccup was with Jeff Thomson, who was contracted to a Queensland radio station that would not, even under Packer’s relentless pursuit, release him.
It was an astonishing raid on the game as most of the world’s best players deserted the established corridors and signed to play in the closest thing cricket has ever seen to a rock’n’roll circus. For a cricket-crazed teenager in London at the time it was a seminal moment, and as much fun as the album that changed the look and feel of the 1970s, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. We watched open-mouthed as the footage from 12,000 miles away had Lillee and Lenny Pascoe, Procter, Rice, Imran, Holding and Roberts bowling a white ball at the speed of light, under lights, dressed in tight, coloured clothes with bell bottoms and butterfly collars. These guys were Kerry’s band and, boy, could they play guitar. Depending on your take, Packer was either the Man Who Sold the World or Starman. Either way, he would have his way and cricket’s commercial transformation had begun.
Having said that, the first year was far from a smash hit. Crowds were desperately disappointing, and some of the logistics hit a wall. Because the major Test-match grounds refused to give Packer any access, the first Supertest was at VFL Park, an Australian Rules Football ground in a relatively inaccessible part of Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. West Indies won in three days but only 13,885 people turned up. The next Supertest was played at the Sydney Showground, slap bang next door to the SCG. Again, West Indies won in three days and this time 23,762 people
turned up. Another disappointment. There was, however, a Machiavellian upside to the downsides. David Hookes had his jaw broken by Andy Roberts, a moment that convinced the public WSC was for real.
Though crowds and publicity warmed to some degree, Packer needed the Australians to win more matches. Soon after the end of the first season, Barry Richards was summoned to the Packer stronghold in Park Street and told that he would play the second season for the Australians. Packer knew that Barry was living with a Sydney girl and had talked of moving to Australia full time. To soften the blow, he offered the South African permanent residency in Australia and a ten-year $30,000 interest-free loan on a house in Crows Nest he knew Barry wanted. Tony Greig and Ian Chappell were in the room and neither liked the idea, partly because it compromised both teams and mainly because it compromised the credibility of the cricket. Packer was not for moving.
The following morning, Barry was summoned again. ‘Change of plan,’ said Packer, ‘you’re back with Greigy’s mob.’ Surprised, relieved but also a tad disappointed, Richards made to get up and go. Packer said, ‘Hang on, son,’ and handed over the residency papers he had promised, plus a cheque for AU$30,000. That is why the World Series cricketers revered Packer. Ten years later to the day, Barry received a call from Packer’s accounts department calling in the loan. Barry smiled and sent off the cheque.
Very quickly, the players began to realise they had done the right thing. The press, however, continued to hound them, and the various boards of control to threaten them. While the WSC executive team liked the high quality of the cricket, the intensity of the competition and the positive television ratings, they were deeply concerned by the spiralling costs and the PR.
Then something simple but game-changing happened: a television commercial blew everyone’s socks off. It showed close-ups of the leading Australian players in their canary-yellow trim and was set to a catchy tune with an easy partisan lyric. ‘C’mon, Aussie, c’mon’ was brilliant, still is. It launched the second season and was every bit as big a boost as winning the battle against the New South Wales Cricket Association to have matches played at the Sydney Cricket Ground. When I arrived for my season in Toronto the ad became the soundtrack of the summer. We all sang it and knew every word. The next thing I wanted to do was get to the SCG and see these guys in action.
The ACB team was being flattened by England; in Toronto, WSC was the talk of the town. I watched in the workers’ club; I watched at Dutchy’s place and I watched even more, day and night, in my own joint by the lake. I knew the past and present of every player, and I was soon pretty good at predicting their future. In his mid 30s, Barry cut it with the big boys, confirming the suspicion that, along with his namesake Viv, the absent Pollock and Greg Chappell, no one on the planet could bat better.
So, to be at the SCG, sitting on the Hill with Paul on the night of the full house—the night Packer threw the gates open—was electrifying. Official figures record that 44,377 people were there. It felt like double that. By the now the players had moved from coloured trim into full colour—canary yellow for the Aussies and coral pink for the West Indies—and the nighttime spectacle drew gasps of admiration from us all. The stage the players had been given was beyond our imagination. WSC formed the aspirations of a new generation of cricket lovers. I was hooked, and all of us were awash with the originality and sense of optimism provided by Packer’s largesse.
Tony Greig could see this and started to realise the enormous impact they were all having on the game. His courage had been extraordinary, his honour intact. Greigy’s one great regret is that he never squared it with the important old-school figures who had backed him throughout the journey from his native South Africa to the England captaincy. Packer had insisted that he sign a confidentiality clause, and then he went underground to recruit the players. By the time the story broke in the early summer of 1977, many of the best were known to be on board and Greig was sacked at the start of that Ashes summer in England.
At the time, England was paying him £200 per Test match, less than the cost of the tickets he had to buy for his family to attend the 1976–77 Centenary Test. He had no doubt he was down the right road but was shocked by the way some turned on him. Writing in The Times, John Woodcock said that Greig was an Englishman ‘not by birth or upbringing but only by adoption’, implying that his disloyalty was no surprise. Greigy hated that: after all, his father, Sandy, was a proud Scot who had been sent to South Africa to train aircrews during the war. Greig fiercely believed that he had sacrificed the most coveted job in English cricket for a cause that would improve the lot of all cricketers.
WSC was a fusion of five-day Test cricket, 50-over hoedowns, country fairs, day time and night time, red balls and white balls, piped clothing, pink, blue and yellow clothing, bouncers, helmets, drop-in pitches, and two Richards from previously untouchable boundaries batting together in the same team. It was played up-country and in the metropolis, in showgrounds, in parks and even, occasionally, on cricket grounds. Pakistanis, West Indians, South Africans, a Kiwi, the Poms and the Aussies all bust a gut on behalf of the same man. Camera, lights, action.
It is often overlooked that Packer loved cricket deeply and that beneath the bluster was an unseen pastoral care for the game’s roots and its people. He took the successful history of cricket and revamped it for the future. The major matches were played with a gladiatorial intensity and at an immensely high standard. The only disappointment was that the circus never came to London town. After two memorable, seismic summers in Australia—and brief flings in New Zealand and the Caribbean—it was all over, gone as suddenly as Ziggy. The rights were secured and Packer, via a High Court restraint-of-trade challenge in London, was in the winners’ enclosure. He had got what he wanted and so drew down the curtain.
Benaud and Greig, both sadly gone now, departed this world very sure of their influence in the most important period the game has seen. Without immediately becoming rich, the players at last earned a decent whack for their ability to fill a stadium. Having said that, it was a long time before their income truly reflected their worth to cricket’s global expansion.
To those of us lucky to have been in Australia for any small part of this show, the memories will never fade. The players reached remarkable heights and each glimpse of them provided a moment when the world stood still. Swathes of women hung around the hotels and Australia’s youth was at one with the chorus of that brilliant jingle that rang out across the second year of this great adventure. It was cricket porn.
Tall, slim and charismatic, with a shock of blond hair that set him apart, Greig somehow led the World XI to victory in the defining Supertest shootout at the Sydney Cricket Ground—a place of redemption at the end of the road. Incredibly, I was there, nervously watching from the ground floor of the Members Pavilion as Barry made a gritty hundred to guide Greig’s team home. I hung around afterwards hoping to see him and was not disappointed. He asked me into the dressing room and introduced me first to Greigy and then to Alan Knott, who chatted away as if he had known me all his life. I met Procter, Le Roux and Asif Iqbal too. I mean, please, can you imagine? When I drove away from Sydney that night I was floating on a cloud.
I didn’t know it then but 25 years later I was to work for Packer at Channel Nine. Perhaps it was meant to be. Perhaps the experiences of 1978–79 were the catalyst for a life-changing story. Certainly, my time spent in Australia helped me understand a passionate, driven people and allowed me to see how, in just a couple of hundred years, they had built a formidable culture of their own.
The storm that hit world cricket soon calmed. Packer negotiated pretty much everything he needed—a list that included ten years of exclusive television rights, a 50 per cent share of the gate and of sponsorship and merchandise revenue, both of which came under the remit of his firm, PBL Marketing. He also designed the pattern of summers to come, with five home tests and the fifteen-match triangular one-day tournament that was to be called World Series Cricket. La
stly, he said every major ground should have floodlights. All that, 37 years ago.
In return, the ACB was relieved to have its game back.
While WSC cost PBL $34 million, the Nine Network was pulling in record revenue and could bear the cost—within two years it was breaking even. All the players were paid out in full, and most of the international players were signed to Mark McCormack’s US-based sports management group, IMG.
WSC changed the game irrevocably and for the good. It is wrong that there is no mention of it in the record books for the cricket was played at the highest standard. The administrators, who at last began to understand the value of their product, should have put that right. It is not too late to do so now. Television coverage improved out of all recognition. Night cricket pulled in new audiences and generated more income. In the greatest form of flattery, other sports imitated much of cricket’s new journey.
Packer’s influence on the game is unparalleled. In fact, some days I wonder if the game as we know it would even be here were it not for him. The vast wealth provided by television rights has made modern sport but Packer’s impact goes beyond that. He understood the Esperanto of the moment and used his own network to drive a rethink in cricket’s global aspirations. It is quite some legacy.
A Beautiful Game Page 6