by John Wisden
So began the years of Greig’s pomp. From the trademark upturned collar, everything about him seemed designed to attract attention: at the crease, he held his bat high in defiance of the textbook (Bradman tut-tutted), and used his tremendous reach to get on the front foot as often as possible. His cover-driving of fast bowlers was a display of power and elegance. When bowling, his hectic approach was a mass of pumping legs and jutting elbows. In the field, he was seldom far from the action, staring batsmen down from close in, or grasping edges in the slips.
He was appointed vice-captain to Mike Denness for the tour of the West Indies in 1973-74, but in the First Test in Trinidad, his combativeness backfired. Fielding the final ball of the second day at silly point, Greig spotted that Alvin Kallicharran, unbeaten on 142, had begun to walk off, and threw down the non-striker’s stumps. Having not yet called time, umpire Douglas Sang Hue had no option but to uphold the appeal. The England team left the field to a fusillade of boos, and things might have turned nasty had the scoreboard operators altered the number of wickets. Even so, the presence of angry supporters outside the ground persuaded Sobers to drive Greig back to the hotel. An evening of intense diplomatic activity ensued, ending with Kallicharran’s reinstatement. England issued a statement apologising for Greig’s “instinctive action”, and next morning he reluctantly agreed to shake Kallicharran’s hand.
When England returned to the Queen’s Park Oval for the final Test, still trailing 1–0, Greig produced perhaps his most unlikely match-winning performance, taking eight for 86 in West Indies’ first innings with brisk off-breaks. He had experimented with them in the Second Test in Jamaica, but purely as a defensive measure. Now, the extra bounce at Port-of-Spain made them a viable attacking weapon, and he added five for 70 in the second innings as England squared the series. Alan Knott called it the finest off-spin bowling he had kept to, but for Derek Underwood it paradoxically marked the end for Greig as an effective Test bowler: “At Trinidad he just hit the right rhythm and pace, but after that he never knew what to do, or what to bowl, on any particular day or wicket.”
Another thrilling performance followed later that year, this time with the bat, at Brisbane. Arriving at 57 for four, with Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in full cry, Greig launched an extraordinary counter-attack, driving with savage intent and cutting anything short over the heads of an astonished slip cordon. He scored 110. “It was one of the best half-dozen innings I ever saw,” said John Woodcock. Greig’s relish for a battle was never more obvious than when he infuriated Lillee by treating bouncers with an exaggerated trembling of the knees, and signalling his own boundaries. His colleagues were impressed by his impudence but appalled by the likely consequences: “Think of the poor bastard at the other end,” Underwood told him. It is easy to imagine the television mogul Kerry Packer noting this bravura performance and luminous screen presence.
When England’s shell-shocked team quickly embarked on a home series with Ian Chappell’s bruisers, Denness was on borrowed time, and resigned halfway through the First Test. Greig’s captaincy credentials had been buffed by, among others, E. W. Swanton (an improbable, but staunch, supporter), Ian Wooldridge and Wisden, although Greig himself felt he had been offered the role only because there were no alternatives. Keen to add backbone to England’s fragile batting, he sought the opinion of umpires, who told him Northamptonshire’s No. 3, David Steele, was the man to stand up to Lillee and Thomson. It proved a shrewd move: in contrasting styles, Greig and Steele restored national pride on a sunlit first day at Lord’s. Greig made 96, Steele 50 and, though the match was drawn and Australia protected their 1–0 lead for the rest of the summer, there was a seismic shift in atmosphere. “He was such a great competitor,” said Steele.
With no England tour that winter, Greig accepted an offer to play grade cricket for Waverley in Sydney, where his on-field success became almost incidental to business contacts and promotional deals. Back in England, he gave an interview to the BBC’s Sportsnight programme ahead of the 1976 West Indies series. Irked by what he saw as the journalist’s emphasis on the qualities of the opposition, he retorted: “I’m not really sure they’re as good as everyone thinks they are.” Next came a comment destined for folklore: “If they get on top, they are magnificent cricketers. But if they are down, they grovel, and I intend – with the help of Closey and a few others – to make them grovel.” From any previous England captain, the remark might have been dismissed as crass psychology; from a white South African, it was just crass. The West Indians were furious. During a long, hot summer, England’s optimism of 1975 drained away in a 3–0 defeat, although Greig responded with a typically feisty century in the Fourth Test at Headingley, before finally grovelling himself, on hands and knees, in front of jubilant West Indian supporters at The Oval.
If Greig had learned something about public relations, he soon put it to good use in India. His charm offensive began before a ball was bowled, when he ostentatiously praised the local umpires. Ahead of one game, he made his men don blazers and jog around the outfield, waving to the crowd. If Greig was in the middle when a firecracker went off, he would fall to the ground as if he had been shot, and he encouraged Derek Randall to play to the gallery too. Thought was also given to the serious business of winning matches. Underwood recalled: “Before we left for India he said to me, ‘You are going to win us the series. If you don’t want to play in any of the games outside the Tests, just let me know and I’ll make sure you don’t have to.’ Nobody had spoken to me like that before.”
Greig’s leadership was inspirational, never more so than in the Second Test at Calcutta, where he batted for more than seven hours with a fever and in a state of near-exhaustion to score 103. It was his second truly great Test innings – and this time in a winning cause. The series was secured when England went 3–0 up at Madras, to complete Greig’s finest hour as captain. Before the party left India, Gubby Allen wondered aloud to friends: “Is he really too good to be true?”
An answer of sorts was around the corner. At the Centenary Test in Melbourne, Greig again showed slick PR skills with a letter to the Age newspaper, thanking the city for its hospitality. But he immediately boarded a flight to Sydney: Packer, owner of Channel Nine, wanted to see him. Infuriated with the Australian Cricket Board’s refusal to sell him the TV rights to Test cricket, Packer was plotting to set up his own breakaway series – and the telegenic Greig was vital to the plan.
Greig was offered $A90,000 for three years, with the guarantee of a job for life at the Packer organisation. He wanted time to think it over, but did not need long. Returning to London, he was ambushed by Eamonn Andrews for This is Your Life, but found time to make contact with Packer’s other English targets. Two days later, he flew to Trinidad to help recruit West Indians and Pakistanis playing a Test there. Packer’s heist remained secret for a few more weeks, long enough for the Australian touring party to arrive in England to defend the Ashes in 1977. Sussex players noted that the dressing-room attendant was suddenly taking a lot more calls for “Mr Greig”. Eventually, as the news leaked in Australia, Greig issued a statement on May 8, announcing a “massive cricket project” for the next Australian summer. He then headed for Hove, hit 50 from 36 balls against Yorkshire, and told Geoff Boycott in the car park to keep an eye on the morning papers.
Retribution was swift. By the end of the week he had been stripped of the England captaincy while, curiously perhaps, retaining his place in the team, now led by Mike Brearley. It was an odd summer. Against a distracted, divided Australian side, England won easily, with Greig making 91 at Lord’s and 76 at Old Trafford. Brearley was appreciative. “When he was dismissed as captain, he might have shown more resentment, or have been only moderately co-operative,” he wrote. “In fact, he could not have been more helpful.” Elsewhere, there were less kind words: he was, wrote Woodcock, not English “through and through”, and his cloak-and-dagger defection severed many alliances; Greig always regretted not being able to forewarn Alec Be
dser, Ken Barrington and Swanton. County dressing-rooms containing Packer players could be chilly places, but Graves insisted there was no problem at Hove: “We wished him well because it was obviously his future.” Tony Lewis saw it differently, calling his behaviour a “betrayal”.
As far as his Test career was concerned, though, that was that. In 58 matches, he made 3,599 runs at 40, with eight hundreds, and took 141 wickets at 32, with six five-fors. Among men to have played at least 25 Tests, only Greig, Aubrey Faulkner and Jacques Kallis have averaged 40 or more with the bat and 33 or fewer with the ball. Overall, in 350 first-class matches, Greig scored 16,660 runs at 31, and took 856 wickets at under 29.
He had never disguised his intention to become “the first millionaire cricketer”. Catching the militant mood of the 1970s, he once stood up at a Professional Cricketers’ Association meeting and suggested a work-to-rule on Sundays. But it was Packer who provided his route to those riches, and the pair strode down the Strand shoulder to shoulder when the WSC players took the authorities to the High Court after they had been banned from the first-class game; the players won. Greig was also at the forefront of promoting WSC in Australia, to the extent that his role as World XI captain became almost secondary. His form was wretched, leading to Ian Chappell’s barb that the World XI was “the best bunch of cricketers I’ve seen – with one exception”. Underwood said: “Out there he was an administrator as well as a cricketer. If there was a problem, he had the job of sorting it out.”
When a peace deal was brokered after two disrupted Australian summers, Packer’s offer of a job for life came good. For the next three decades, Greig was integral to Channel Nine’s coverage. His excitable style – “He’s gone, goodnight Charlie!” – did not please everyone, but his voice became almost as familiar as Richie Benaud’s, and his sparring with Bill Lawry was central to Australian humorist Billy Birmingham’s Twelfth Man parodies.
In the summer of 2012, Greig was invited by MCC president Phillip Hodson, his brother-in-law, to give the Spirit of Cricket Lecture. His first draft included no mention of the Packer years, until he was persuaded the topic could not be ignored, and he was typically outspoken on India’s role in the world game. In October 2012 it was revealed Greig was suffering from lung cancer; two months later, he died in a Sydney hospital after suffering a heart attack at home. On the Saturday morning when Britain awoke to the news, the honours list was published. Denness had been awarded an OBE. It left Greig as the only England captain without such recognition – an outsider to the end.
HARDMAN, THOMAS RICHARD, was found dead in his bed in student accommodation in Leeds on November 28. He was 21. Initial reports suggested no suspicious circumstances. Tom Hardman was a promising fast bowler from Manchester, who made his debut for the Central Lancashire League club Heywood when he was 12, and a useful batsman who scored a century for Lancashire’s Under-17s. He was part of the Leeds/Bradford MCCU side who almost won their initial first-class match, against Surrey at The Oval in April 2012; his first wicket was Tom Maynard. “He was a real hard worker, and a lovely bloke to have around the dressing-room,” said Clive Radley, the former England batsman who coaches the combined MCC Universities team. “His leadership qualities were such that I had already earmarked him for the captaincy in 2013.”
HILL, GEOFFREY HARRY, died on March 13, aged 77. Geoff Hill was a slow left-armer who took eight for 70 against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in 1958, his first season for Warwickshire, which he ended with 59 wickets at 20. But his form fell away, and he left the county midway through 1960, remaining a prolific wicket-taker in the Birmingham League.
HOAD, EDWARD LISLE GOLDSWORTHY, died on June 13, aged 86. Ted Hoad was a leg-spinner and tailender although, like his father of the same name, who had a long career for Barbados and played four Tests for West Indies, he occasionally opened the batting. He played nine matches for Barbados between 1944 and 1954, recording his highest score of 74 from the top of the order against Jamaica at Kingston in March 1947.
HOW, EDWARD JOSEPH, died on March 29, aged 37, after a fall while skiing in Val d’Isère, in France. Ed How played 14 first-class matches for Cambridge University in the mid-1990s, appearing twice in the Varsity Match, and also won a football Blue. He went into the City, becoming a vice-president of Deutsche Bank, then abruptly switched careers by moving to Charterhouse School, where he taught chemistry and coached cricket and football with enormous enthusiasm. A left-arm seamer, his overall record was a modest 13 wickets at 88, but he did have one golden day, at Canterbury in June 1997 when he took five for 59. His team-mate Ed Smith remembered: “I never like the phrase ‘good club man’, but Ed was all the best things about that expression. He was sociable, warm, generous-spirited and fun-loving.”
HUEY, SAMUEL SCOTT JOHNSTON, died on March 8, aged 88. Scott Huey was something of a legend in Irish cricket, a teasing slow left-armer who took six for 49 and eight for 48 against MCC in 1954 – and finished top of the first-class averages. In 1965 he claimed five for 68 against the New Zealand tourists. In all, he took 112 wickets for Ireland.
HYAMS, JOHN, died on May 2, aged 92. Jack Hyams claimed to have scored more than 125,000 runs and 170 centuries in a club career that stretched for around 80 years – his last matches were played in Spain in 2010, when he was past 90. His deeds were carefully catalogued at home, and included appearances for MCC and Cross Arrows when over 70, as well as several prominent north London clubs. He was also an inveterate tourist and, on his travels, “a tireless dancer every night into his nineties”, according to his friend Michael Blumberg. Hyams had invested in a new bat for the 2012 season, but never got to use it in anger.
HYATT, ROLAND SHANE, died on July 5, aged 50. Roly Hyatt had a fine record in junior and grade cricket, but was unable to translate that into first-class success, despite an extended trial over three seasons for Tasmania from 1983-84. His off-breaks did not spin enough – his career average was over 70 – and an attempt to turn him into a specialist batsman was also unsuccessful, although he did make three fifties against South Australia. After retirement he was beset by financial problems which had legal consequences, compounded by the effect of alcohol on his health.
IFFLA, IRVIN BANCROFT, who died on March 16, aged 88, became a widely admired figure in Scottish cricket after leaving his native Jamaica in 1951 to take up a professional contract with Stirling County. He lived in Scotland for the rest of his life. An off-spinner and useful lower-order batsman, Iffla played four matches for Jamaica before his departure, claiming five for 90 against the 1947-48 MCC tourists. He made an immediate impact in his new country. “He transformed the whole club and the whole of Scottish cricket,” said Raymond Bond, Stirling’s wicketkeeper at the time. “He was a magician with the ball and brilliant with the bat – and people came flocking to Williamfield, Stirling’s home ground, to see him every Saturday.” Iffla also had stints at Ayrshire and Stenhousemuir, both of which, like Stirling, won the league title while he was their professional. Mike Denness, the Scot who went on to captain England, was one of many who benefited from Iffla’s coaching at Ayrshire: “I learned so much just from watching the man, let alone listening to what he was saying.” Iffla continued as an amateur into his sixties, ending his club career with more than 13,000 runs and 1,600 wickets. In 2009, he was granted the Freedom of Stirling; the flag at the city council chambers flew at half-mast for his funeral.
JEGUST, GERTRUDE MARIE, died on February 21, a month short of her 101st birthday. Born in Beckenham in 1911, Marie Jegust was taken to Australia when young: her family helped establish the township of Cowaramup in the south-western corner of Western Australia. In 1930, she became the foundation secretary of the WA Women’s Cricket Association, and seven years later returned to the land of her birth with the Australian women’s team, although she had a modest tour, and did not play in any of the Tests. Her memoirs, 99 Not Out, came out shortly before her death.
JORDON, RAYMOND CLARENCE, died on August 13, aged 75. Always known as
“Slug”, because he had collected a blank bullet in his side during National Service, Ray Jordon was Victoria’s wicketkeeper for most of the 1960s. To the seamers, he was safe and unostentatious but, standing up, his speed and sureness were exceptional: 48 of his 238 dismissals were stumpings, five of them from the fast-medium bowling of Alan Connolly, including Ian and Greg Chappell in the same innings. If batsmen were not intimidated by his withering welcome – in a voice “like a chainsaw”, according to Max Walker – they could grow agitated if Jordon decided to lurk in their pocket to a quick bowler. His best match haul was in 1970-71, his final season, when he collected nine catches and a stumping against South Australia. As a batsman, he was a habitual thorn down the list, where he allied a dogged defence to an ability to deal with the loose ones. Jordon’s only century came against South Australia in 1963-64.
He was a noted scrapper, but his willingness to push his luck probably cost him a Test cap. He toured India and South Africa in 1969-70, competing for a place with Brian Taber after the retirement of Barry Jarman. Taber was tried first and, when Jordon was given a game against India’s South Zone, Ian Chappell was convinced he knowingly let Erapalli Prasanna be given out bowled when the ball had rebounded from his pads. Chappell was adamant he would not play himself if Jordon was selected to replace Taber in a Test.