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(Part 40.) Competing views
“This one-day cricket is crap!”
That was the view of Stephen Hearst. Who was (he passed away in 2010) Stephen Hearst, you ask?
Photo: Patrick Eagar/ via Getty Images.
Well, at the time of the 1975 Cricket World Cup in England, he held the title of Controller on Radio 3 of the BBC. And because Test Match Special was on Radio 3 at the time, Hearst’s attitude to the relatively new limited-over format meant that there was no ball-by-ball radio commentary of the tournament, in the United Kingdom, until the final.
Yes, believe it or not, the first Men’s World Cup, at the home of the game, had no continuous radio coverage—there were brief reports from the various venues—until the final on 21 June.
It’s sort of like Trinidad and Tobago hosting and helping to pay for the headquarters of the Caribbean Court of Justice but not utilising it as the final court of appeal.
Photo: Hulton Archive.
So, as we continue the countdown with 11 days to go to the day when Hearst actually felt it worthwhile to provide running commentary on the West Indies versus Australia final at Lord’s, we look at some of the competing perspectives on what was considered at the time to be a bold innovation in the game—via a well-researched contribution by English author Nicholas Brookes, which appears in this year’s edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
Apparently Austrian-born Hearst (he changed his surname from its original Hirshtritt) knew nothing about cricket. But he was fascinated by Test cricket coverage as conversations in and around the game rolled on for five days, which is what made Test Match Special—the brand for the BBC’s radio coverage of all “live” international cricket—the revered and much-loved institution in English life, since it was first established for the West Indies tour of England in 1957.
Let’s move on now to other less-than-complimentary comments on the inaugural World Cup via Brookes’ essay.
One journalist, who was not identified, referred to the tournament as “the World-without-South Africa-Cup”, reflecting the strong tabanca felt by many in Britain at the time for the apartheid state—and the fact that the isolation of South Africa from international cricket since 1970 actually created the window for the first Men’s World Cup.
The South Africans were originally scheduled to tour England that summer.
Even the committee formed to promote the event by the Test and County Cricket Board, the administrators of the game at the time in England, operated on the understanding that the World Cup (or Prudential Cup as many media insisted on referring to it) “should not be allowed to overshadow the subsequent Test series against Australia”.
Interestingly, that committee, known as the ICC Cup Promotional Working Party, was headed by former England batsman Raman Subba Row and Derrick Robins.
Why interestingly? Because Subba Row, who averaged 46.85 from 13 Tests with three centuries and four fifties, retired from the game at age 29—the same age at which Nicholas Pooran has just bowed out from West Indies representation—to focus on his public relations business.
Both teams opted to use the free day to play a game of limited overs cricket instead.
Copyright: Lords.
And Robins, the millionaire chairman of Coventry City Football Club, was at the time satisfying his personal fixation with South Africa by arranging regular cricket tours to that country.
As Brookes highlights, former England captain Tony Lewis previously referred to one-day cricket as “a necessary evil”.
And even after the phenomenal success and overwhelming public response to the two week-long World Cup, the legendary British television talk show host Michael Parkinson couldn’t hide his disgust with the abbreviated format of the game.
“It is like a strip show raising funds for the legitimate theatre,” he is reported as saying. “It would be a dangerous thing if the present euphoric mood hid the fact that limited-over cricket is merely a gimmick.”
Advance 28 years from 1975 and essentially the same disparaging remarks were directed towards the T20 format, introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board at the 2003 domestic season.
Another classic example of the cliché: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Yet while many notable public personalities were turning their noses up at the World Cup, others bought into it wholesale.
Terry Blake, the tournament director when the World Cup returned to England in 1999 after three editions on the Indian sub-continent (1987 and 1996) and Australia (1992), remembers his experience of what Brookes describes as “the most vibrant carnival of cricket in the game’s history”.
“Fans were licking their lips about the talented squads selected,” Blake recalls. “It was intense and slightly exotic to have so many teams in one country for the first time (for cricket). I had a holiday job as an ice cream salesman near Horsham, and had the radio in the van on all tournament long.”
Photo: Rexscanpix/ Daily Mail.
Two things from that. One: given that there was no continuous ball-by-ball commentary until the final, Blake had to be listening to updates from the various grounds—as four matches were played on the same day for the three rounds of the group stage while the semi-finals were also played simultaneously.
Two: he must have done a thriving trade in ice cream because, amazingly for England, not a drop of rain interrupted play in the two weeks in June, just before the official start of summer, where the World Cup held sporting centre stage.
Robin Marlar, the “Sunday Times” cricket correspondent and former Sussex spinner, celebrated the innovation.
“After this summer, the one-day game will be everlastingly international,” he wrote, adding that the tournament had extended the game’s audience “from theatre to cinema proportions”.
This must be taken with a barrel of salt though, as that reference of theatre to cinema implies a transition from the hoity-toities to the commoners.
Cricket, like British society, has always been and continues to be class-conscious. Indeed, there are many examples of Marlar’s suspect motives, which are actually celebrated in the UK as examples of a forthright, no-holds-barred perspective in his weekly columns.
Photo: Eric Piper/ Daily Mirror.
When Clive Lloyd played his final big match for Lancashire on the English domestic circuit in the 1986 NatWest Trophy final against Sussex at Lord’s, Marlar, in previewing the fixture, had a dig at the former West Indies captain.
He said the 1975 and 1979 World Cup-winning skipper has “presided over the introduction of a new violence into cricket”—an obvious reference to the West Indies policy of deploying four fast bowlers almost without exception during the era of near complete domination by the Caribbean side from 1980 to 1995.
There is no record of Marlar that I can yet locate of him expressing similar sentiments at England captain Douglas Jardine’s unleashing of the fast bowling tactic which became known as “bodyline”—and was since outlawed—in the 1932/33 Ashes series, which almost threatened diplomatic relations between England and Australia.
The series was subsequently renamed the “Bodyline Series” due to the aggressive bowling strategy credited, infamously, to England captain Douglas Jardine.
(via Cricket Country.)
As a final footnote, it is not known if Lloyd read Marlar’s piece before the match and was put off by it, as he fell leg-before for a duck to Man of the Match Dermot Reeve with Lancashire losing by seven wickets.
Next: West Indies prevail in the first ODI thriller.
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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 Read more
(Part 35.) No unlucky 13. Clive Lloyd’s 1975 Cricket World Cup squad marked the first time that a West Indies Read more
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.
