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(Part 36.) Down to business.
After all that build-up, with historical context, player profiles and a few other bits and pieces, the countdown to the 1975 World Cup final is now truly on ahead of the opening day of competition in the eight-team event.
Copyright: Getty Images.
So, with 15 days to go to the 50th anniversary of the June 21 decider at Lord’s, we set the stage for the 14 days of action by previewing the first round of matches.
First, a reminder of the two preliminary groups. Group A: England, New Zealand, India, East Africa. Group B: West Indies, Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.
It’s a straightforward round-robin format with each team playing the other once after which the top two advance to the semi-finals, with the Group A winners facing the Group B runners-up and vice-versa.
(via SportsCrunch.)
Unlike now, and as in other international sporting events where broadcast schedules, television rights and maximising the global viewing audience are priorities, this inaugural men’s cricket World Cup saw four group matches being played simultaneously on 7, 11, and 14 June.
Both semi-finals were on 18 June and then the final three days later. This meant the World Cup was done and dusted in a fortnight.
Compare that to what obtains now, where the World Cup is an almost two-month marathon with everyone playing everyone at the group stage with one match per day to maximise viewership.
Although that structure may change slightly for the next edition—2027 in South Africa—with 14 teams and not 10, as previously scheduled, to participate, it is still likely to be four times the length of what obtained for the first three tournaments in 1975, 1979 and 1983 when England were the hosts.
As for the matches themselves, they were 60 overs-per-side with all the trimmings of traditional long-form cricket: lunch and tea intervals, white clothing, red balls, no fielding restrictions.
Photo: ICC.
Basically, the only elements differentiating it from first-class cricket were the overs limitation and the restriction of bowlers to a maximum 12 overs per innings.
And given that the matches were being played in England, where the weather was always likely to intervene, there were two additional days set aside for the completion of matches in each round of play.
As it turned out though, not a minute of play was lost over the 15 matches and two weeks of cricket due to the elements, despite, as highlighted earlier this week, snowfall abandoning a day’s play in a county match between Derbyshire and Lancashire in the market town of Buxton—five days before the World Cup got underway.
Photo: Buxton Cricket Club.
Obviously, our focus is on the eventual champions West Indies. But before previewing their opening encounter against Sri Lanka at Old Trafford in Manchester, these were the other fixtures on the 7 June opening day:
England versus India at Lord’s, New Zealand versus East Africa at Edgbaston in Birmingham in Group A, and Australia versus Pakistan in the other Group B match at Headingley in Leeds.
Seeking to ensure they had five frontline bowling options for their first match, the West Indies opted to omit opener Gordon Greenidge, who had made his Test debut seven months earlier in India.
Photo: Cricbuzz.
Instead, veteran Rohan Kanhai, in the squad due to the knee injury which ruled out Garry Sobers from the tournament, was assigned the task of opening the batting with Roy Fredericks.
That adjustment allowed for a bowling attack spearheaded by Andy Roberts with the fast-medium Keith Boyce, left-arm swing bowler Bernard Julien and workhorse medium-pacer Vanburn Holder in support.
Lance Gibbs, a member of the West Indies team since 1958, was the specialist spinner in what turned out to be his only match of the World Cup.
Photo: CWI Media.
So, the XI, in intended batting order, was as follows: Roy Fredericks, Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharran, Clive Lloyd (captain), Vivian Richards, Bernard Julien, Keith Boyce, Deryck Murray (wicketkeeper), Vanburn Holder, Andy Roberts and Lance Gibbs.
Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon in the time of European colonisation (Dutch, Portuguese and British), were pushing their case for full-member, and therefore, Test status with the International Cricket Conference.
Their national teams had played full-member nations occasionally—most often at the tail-end of tours of India and Pakistan.
Kanhai’s consistency was critical to West Indies’ dominance in England in two tours in the 1960’s and his farewell assignment there as captain in 1973.
Copyright: Getty Images.
Indeed the West Indies had toured the island three times before the 1975 World Cup: 1949, 1967 and just three months previously at the end of the 1974/75 campaign in India and Pakistan, although those fixtures were not accorded the status of official international matches.
That meant Lloyd’s squad would have been reasonably familiar with their first opponents even if they were, in the main, virtual unknowns to the rest of the cricketing world.
Sri Lanka’s XI for that first World Cup match against the West Indies, in batting order, was: Ranjit Fernando (wicketkeeper), Bandula Warnapura, Anura Tennekoon (captain), David Heyn, Michael Tissera, Duleep Mendis, Anura Ranasinghe, Mevan Pieris, Tony Opatha, Somachandra de Silva and Lalith Kaluperuna.
Mendis endured a chastening experience at the 1975 World Cup but later developed as a batsman and eventual captain of Sri Lanka.
(via Wisden.)
Installed as pre-tournament favourites to lift the World Cup, the Sri Lankans were expected to be no match for a West Indies team comprising a vast majority of players with not only significant international experience but also familiarity with English conditions.
However, this was something new for everyone and even with a build-up in which there was precious little by way of marketing and advertising to the cricket-loving audience in England, there was a sense of something special about to happen on the eve of the tournament.
In his autobiography Gordon Greenidge, The Man in the Middle, the Barbados-born, England-qualified West Indies opening batsman explains how he and his team became aware of the increasing pre-tournament interest:
Photo: Rexscanpix/ Daily Mail.
“The event quickly captured the imagination of the public but it was not until we began to prepare in earnest for the competition that I realised just how seriously they (the fans) were taking it.
“Everywhere we went, supporters of no particular team would come up and tell us of the gigantic sums of money passing over the counters of betting shops and in pubs and clubs. All of it on us to win.
“This created its own pressures because we realised so much was expected of us. What’s more, it soon became apparent that the sponsors (Prudential Insurance) were depending on the West Indies also to add spice to the event by playing in true ‘calypso’ style.”
We’ll find out if that expectation of result and style panned out in the opening match against Sri Lanka in the next edition of this countdown. The match report of legendary cricket journalist and broadcaster Tony Cozier will be presented here verbatim, with the permission of his son, Craig.
This will apply for all match reports moving on to the anniversary of the final on 21 June.
As they say: stay tuned.
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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.
