The Shorter Wisden 2013 (41 page)

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
Bedser, 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.

Jordon was a genuine character, and the stories about him are legion; many are true but few are printable. His vocabulary was not for the faint-hearted: one of his friends announced in the
tributes column of a Melbourne paper that “Heaven will make a fortune from the swear-box.” Jordon was a dynamic presence in Australian Rules football as an insightful coach of younger
players, and was described by Keith Stackpole, a close friend, as “a unique judge of character”, despite his abrasiveness. He had a period as a radio commentator on cricket, and his
times on air with Richie Benaud gave a new dimension to Puccini’s “strange harmony of contrasts”. A stroke early in this century saw him draw on his reserves of stoicism, but
eventually cancer was too much, even for Slug.