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(Part 28.) England expects…
If experience alone was the deciding factor, England would have won the 1975 Cricket World Cup running away.
In no other part of the cricketing world was the limited-over game played in such profusion at that time. We already established that the first limited-over competition started in India in 1951—that’s 11 years before it was trialled at the home of the game.
The 1963 Gillette Cup was the first limited-over tournament to ever be played in England.
Copyright: Sussex Cricket Museum.
By the time the World Cup came around though, the English domestic schedule was bursting with limited-over cricket.
(Note: it was not yet referred to as white ball cricket because the traditional red ball ruled for the first four World Cups and was only changed to the white option when matches at the tournament were played under lights during the 1992 edition in Australia and New Zealand.)
There were three domestic competitions: the 40-overs-per-side John Player League, the 55 overs-per-side Benson and Hedges Cup, and the 60 overs-per-side Gillette Cup (the format adopted for the World Cup).
Copyright: The Melbourne Age.
Add to that the fact that England featured in 15 of the 18 One-Day Internationals played up the that point and it’s obvious that they were expected to be in the reckoning for the title.
That’s why, with 23 days to go to the memorable culmination of that inaugural men’s tournament on 21 June, we look at how England were shaping up.
Full of experience yes, but still reeling from the battering they endured the previous winter in Australia where they surrendered the Ashes 4-1 in a six-match series dominated by the pace and hostility of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee.
They would have been relieved therefore, especially their beleaguered batsmen, to see England placed in what looked a weaker preliminary group with New Zealand, India and complete newcomers East Africa.
Photo: Getty Images.
In contrast, the Aussies had to contend with tournament favourites the West Indies, the always dangerous Pakistan and a plucky Sri Lankan team, keen to use the tournament as a test case in their continuing pursuit of Test status.
Note that India then were nothing like India now—which will be elaborated upon in an upcoming instalment of this series.
Notwithstanding the debacle of the Ashes campaign and having sensationally dropped himself for the fourth Test in Sydney because of poor form, Mike Denness was retained as captain for both the World Cup and the start of the four-match return Ashes series which followed immediately.
(via Historic Cricket Pictures.)
Denness, who was also at the helm when England won the final Test at the Queen’s Park Oval to draw the 1974 series 1-1, was certainly not popular with the media, and apparently even some of his own teammates felt he wasn’t worth his place in the side as a batsman.
Meanwhile, the man who eventually replaced him as England captain after the first Test of the 1975 Ashes, Tony Greig, was very much the golden boy of English cricket at the time.
Greig’s 13 wickets with a mixture of seam and spin in that Trinidad Test plus a century against Lillee and Thommo, when all around him were being blown away, added to his credentials.
(via Daily Record.)
He was not just an all-rounder of quality, but a cricketer with a bit of grit and a desire for confrontation, which probably had something to do with his South African birth and upbringing.
Of course, a year later he would take that confrontational attitude too far with a “grovelling” remark in reference to the West Indies cricketers, then on a full tour of England.
They, especially the fast bowlers, never allowed him to forget it through those five Tests.
At the top of the order, Dennis Amiss was keen to recapture the form he enjoyed for most of 1974, when he came within two runs of former Australian opener Bobby Simpson’s record for the most Test runs in a calendar year: 1,381.
Amiss would have probably broken that record, except that Lillee and Thompson came across his path with devastating effect.
On the bowling side, England had what looked like a balanced attack with the spin of Derek Underwood, Greig’s variations and the seam and swing of Geoff Arnold, Chris Old and Peter Lever.
Photo: ICC.
Their real bowling threat though, assuming he was in the mood, was fast bowler John Snow.
A series-winner for Colin Cowdrey in the Caribbean in 1968 and, famously, for Ray Illingworth in the 1970/71 Ashes campaign Down Under, Snow still had it in him to challenge the best—except that he often ran afoul of the authorities who had a habit of dropping him in hope of teaching him a lesson.
Someone who couldn’t be dropped though was Geoffrey Boycott. Why? Because he remained unavailable for selection.
England’s lightning rod of an opening batsman—he was loved by many, hated by the rest—opted out of national duty a year earlier and it would be another two years before he returned to Test cricket, triumphantly, in the 1977 Ashes series.
Would he have made a positive difference to England’s World Cup chances?
Probably not, although his presence would definitely have raised interest in the hosts’ matches and by extension, the tournament itself.
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Fazeer Mohammed is a journalist/broadcaster with almost 40 years’ experience across a range of media.
His interest in cricket, and particularly its history, started at home via his father’s small collection of autobiographies and magazines, offering perspectives and context which have informed his commentary and analysis on contemporary issues in the game.
