Tony Greig

David Tossell

Description

Tony Greig is remembered as the colourful captain who led cricket into its biggest crisis of the last century. An all-rounder who mixed boldness with belligerence, he was the first South African to skipper England, restoring national pride with victory in India after poundings at the hands of Australia and the West Indies. A controversial and charismatic competitor whose "make them grovel" comment about the West Indies signalled trouble, he later lost the captaincy for recruiting players for Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket. More than three decades later, now a leading television commentator, Greig has never been fully absolved. Featuring many new interviews, including with Greig himself, the book asks whether cricket history judges the accomplished all-rounder fairly, or is coloured by off-field controversies. Tony Greig offers a compelling portrait of a fascinating cricketing era - and was shortlisted for Best Cricket Book at the 2012 British Sports Book Awards.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Inglaterra
• England
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908051226
• Langue: English

Extrait

TONY GREIG
A reappraisal of English cricket s most controversial captain
DAVID TOSSELL
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: There s a Starman waiting in the sky
PART 1: ALL-ROUNDER
1 QUEENSTOWN: Alcohol, illness and inspiration
2 SUSSEX: A family at war
3 SOUTH AFRICA: Politics and opportunity
4 OLD TRAFFORD: For king and country
5 BOMBAY: Land of hope and glory
6 COUNTY GROUND, HOVE: Moving up in the world
7 TRINIDAD: Pirate of the Caribbean
8 A PLACE IN HISTORY: Among the giants
PART 2: ENGLAND CAPTAIN
9 BRISBANE: Courage under fire
10 EDGBASTON: England, my England
11 LORD S: Restoring the nation s health
12 THE OVAL: He has, in his own words, grovelled
13 CALCUTTA: Leading from the front
PART THREE: REBEL, REBEL
14 DYKE CLOSE, HOVE: You say you want a revolution
15 WINDLESHAM SCHOOL: Public enemy number one
16 ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE: I felt like a criminal
17 SYDNEY: The unforgiven
18 EXILE: Long road to redemption
Appendix
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
There s a Starman waiting in the sky
The mythology of Tony Greig begins with his first innings for Sussex, a virtuoso knock of 156 against Lancashire early in the 1967 season. The inverted commas are there because, in spite of Greig s own recollections in his autobiography and Wisden s eulogy when naming him one of its Five Cricketers of the Year in 1975, it wasn t actually his debut innings for the county. It was his first County Championship performance, but he d already batted twice for Sussex against Cambridge University the previous season. Other accounts refer to the Lancashire match as his first-class debut, whereas he d played three previous games, one for Border in the Currie Cup and one for an invitation team against the West Indies tourists, in addition to that university match.
The point is made not to be pedantic or to highlight flaws in human recall, nor to lessen the drama of that century, but to demonstrate that the essence of Tony Greig as a cricketer was always bigger and more relevant than the strict facts and figures of his career. The images of him carving Dennis Lillee to the boundary again and again in Brisbane in 1974, goading him further with every shot, are more enduring than the final tally of his innings.
My own first clear memory of him can be dated to June 1972. The infamous Manchester weather had already forced the Ashes series to begin an hour and a half late and the clouds that hung stubbornly above Old Trafford had clearly influenced the delayed action on the field. Australia s opening bowlers, Dennis Lillee and David Colley, were making the ball move in the air and bounce sharply on a patchy green wicket, while four slip fielders waited hungrily as England s batsmen shoved their dead bats in line and hoped for the best. The evening session was well under way by the time England s third wicket fell. With Geoff Boycott also off the field after being struck painfully on the arm, it was Greig s turn to bat. Having run home from school to catch the final period of play on BBC2, I was watching intently as Greig emerged down the steps of the Victorian pavilion.
This was the start of a summer that fell during as carefree a period as I can remember in my life. I was, after all, only 11 and not expected to be taking much notice of headlines such as that week s arrest of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. Even the miners strike earlier in the year would probably have passed me by but for Arsenal having to replay an FA Cup tie against Derby on a midweek afternoon because of the restrictions on using floodlights during the resulting power shortage.
End-of-term exams that would determine whether I achieved a place at the local grammar school were of less concern than whether T. Rex and Metal Guru could hold on at number one in the face of Donny Osmond s bloody awful Puppy Love - a battle that divided our classroom along gender lines even more rigidly than the usual pre-pubescent demarcations. The girls, of course, were too wrapped up in collecting posters of Donny and David Cassidy in the latest Jackie magazine to appreciate that the most important battle of the year had arrived: the Ashes series.
Even though it was the first England-Australia contest I would be able to fully immerse myself in, I did already consider myself something of a Test match veteran. My earliest exposure had been when my dad had taken me to The Oval on the Friday of the fifth game in the 1970 series between England and the Rest of the World. Unfamiliar with many of the names and the history they carried I had been conscious nevertheless of witnessing something special as I sat on the boundary edge watching Graeme Pollock and Garry Sobers rattling up a partnership in excess of 150. If I missed the significance of a South African and a West Indian batting harmoniously during a summer when opposition to apartheid had resulted in Pollock s country being banned from touring, I was at least open to the captivating strokeplay of the two left-handers.
That winter, I recall listening to early morning reports of the Ashes-clinching victory of Ray Illingworth s side in Sydney. And during the following summer I seem to have spent days wondering if Pakistan s Zaheer Abbas would ever be dismissed, before trying to fathom how England were managing to lose at home to India. Even though I d seen them handsomely beaten by that World team in a series since declassified as official Test cricket, this was my first experience of defeat to another nation.
By the first Sunday of June 1972, therefore, I was wise to the vagaries of the England team and I knew exactly how it worked when the selectors named their side. As surely as those German police rounding up their Red Army targets, England would focus on the usual suspects. While younger, energetic types such as Peter Lever, Bob Willis, Ken Shuttleworth and the rebellious John Snow could be entrusted with running up and bowling fast, the matter of blunting the Australian attack was better left to the tried and tested; to the old men, in fact. For the first Test, the top five batsmen were announced as Boycott, the youngster of the group at 31, John Edrich, Brian Luckhurst and, with a combined 79 years in the number four and five positions, former captain M.J.K. Smith and Basil D Oliveira. All slickedback short hair, that lot reminded me of my dad s office colleagues. There was barely an athlete among them. Smith even wore glasses, for heaven s sake. He looked like the scorer. Later in the series, the next batsman to be introduced was Peter Parfitt, comfortably into his mid-30s.
But when Greig, batting at number six, arrived at the crease at Old Trafford, it was clear that here was something different. If English cricket in 1972 could be said to have had a glam rock moment, this was it. It was the Test match equivalent of David Bowie appearing in eye make-up and a multi-coloured catsuit among the likes of the New Seekers and Neil Diamond on Top of the Pops . Greig had played in three of those unofficial England games against the Rest of the World in 1970 but had lost the all-rounder s place the following year to Yorkshire s Richard Hutton, an earnest trier whose bowling action I reproduced in garden matches by adopting a slower version of my John Snow.
Yet there was no one you could adapt in order to replicate Greig. He stood alone, literally and figuratively. At more than 6ft 7in. he was taller than anyone I had ever seen on a sports field, unless you counted those Harlem Globetrotters games that were sometimes on television over Bank Holiday weekends. When we saw him bowl it turned out that, for all his blond-haired athleticism, he had a laboured, pigeon-toed approach to the crease, arms pumping like pistons. When, later in his career, he switched from medium pace to off-spinners he gave the impression of a contestant in a slow bicycle race, intent on taking as long to reach his destination as his ground-eating legs would allow. It was almost impossible to properly copy his arthritic-looking action without losing balance.
For now, though, on this Thursday in early June - and again in the second innings a few days later - it was his batting that demanded attention. When he drove at Colley or spinner John Gleeson, he appeared to do so fearlessly, left leg advancing telescopically down the track, right hand punching through the ball as though this was a cement-hard surface in South Africa, from where he had arrived to play for Sussex, rather than a green-top in Manchester. When those drives were really flowing he would seem to literally jump into his follow-through, the way Joe Frazier had lifted himself off his feet to deliver the left hook that had floored Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century a year earlier. By comparison, his team-mates in this game seemed incapable of anything more than a nudge or nurdle, the cricketer s equivalent of the tentative jab.
Admittedly, that recollection of Greig s first innings in Test cricket, reinforced by brief video highlights, has become airbrushed by time. Contemporary reports of the game note him looking anxious early on, being dropped with barely a run scored, and only hitting his stride on the second morning when he began to cut Gleeson and played a pair of stirring on-drives to reach the first of his two half-centuries in the match.
Time might have helped me over-glamorise my introduction to Tony Greig, but even in that first glimpse this 25-year-old was so markedly different from the middle-aged mediocrity around him that I was left wondering what planet, let alone what country, he had arrived from. Had we run out of geriatric blockers? Looking back on the year of 1972 in his book Apathy for the Devil , rock journalist Nick Kent might have been writing about Greig and English cricket when he said, A new decade was actually starting to define itself and anyone with even a hint of talent and personal magnetism stood a figh