After offering various hints to my other half, I received a copy of 'Grovel!', David Tossell's book on the 1976 West Indians' tour of England. Aged fifteen at the time, it was a summer's cricket I will never forget. These days, it is often remembered most of all for the England captain's threat to make the Caribbean opposition 'grovel'. As a teenager, that infamous interview on BBC TV's Sportsnight passed me by. Now it has returned to the headlines, prompted by the sad death of the aforementioned skipper, Tony Greig.
I recently wrote of the realisation that Greig was more than just a humiliated cricket captain, vilified 'traitor' for robbing England of their top players and the sport of its traditional soul or even a respected TV commentator. He was in fact one of England's best all-rounders of the post-war era. In his five-year, 58-match Test career, he averaged more than 40, less common in the '70s than now, and his 141 wickets came at barely 32 apiece. He played top-class cricket for only 14 seasons, yet aggregated 20,000 runs and 1100 wickets in all forms of the game.
It's no longer unusual for a cricketer to stand six feet six inches tall but forty years ago, Tony Greig appeared to be freakishly tall. A blonde giant, he progressed from Sussex to the England side during the 1972 Ashes series, scoring two half-centuries and taking five wickets on his debut. Unlike team-mate Basil D'Oliveira, Greig was a white South African from Cape Province, with a Scottish father, and his harsh accent often jarred against more familiar domestic tones heard on these shores, especially when he replaced Mike Denness as captain of his adopted country.
He also stood out for having two completely different types of bowling. His gentle medium pace seamers were mixed with spells of off-spin, all delivered from the same eccentric run-up and arm action, something I tried to copy in fun as a teenager! Greig's best performances seemed to be reserved for Tests against India, and on the 1972-3 tour, he scored 382 runs at 64, bagged 11 cheap wickets and snaffled nine catches. He had more success there four years later, and averaged 48 with the bat in the West Indies in 1974. That illustrated his versatility, equally at home against world-class spinners and some of the most fearsome fast bowlers the game has ever known.
It is the latter who helped define his playing career in the long hot summer of 1976. It was at Hove on 2nd June, the eve of the First Test, that he uttered the 'G' word that was to inspire Clive Lloyd's side to reach cricketing heights and put their demolition at the hands of Lillee and Thomson behind them in such exhilarating fashion. However, as Greig writes in the foreword to 'Grovel!' it was taken slightly out of context, following remarks about the Windies' inconsistencies: "...if they get on top, they are magnificent cricketers. But if they're down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of Closey and others, to make them grovel". In his first innings at Trent Bridge, Andy Roberts bowled him for a duck, and the skipper recalls how the pacemen delighted in giving him their nastiest bouncers, and the likes of Viv Richards, Alvin Kallicharran and Lloyd went after his bowling with greater degrees of glee. With the honourable exception of Leeds, the West Indians tended to get their way.
Greig also wrote that England may have fared better with fewer injuries, an available Geoff Boycott and greater luck, but I still doubt that 1976 would not be remembered by me for the astonishing swaggering strokeplay of Richards and the rhythm of 'Whispering Death' Michael Holding. World Series Cricket (WSC), championed by recruiter-in-chief Tony Greig, prevented the world witnessing the latter playing in an official rematch in 1980. By then Greig was settled in Australia and he was to make his name as an opinionated and highly-excitable commentator for Channel Nine.
Hopefully his passing will prompt a re-evaluation of his value to English cricket in the 1970s. I feel able to forgive him his apparent treachery over WSC and remember AW Greig as a swashbuckling batsman, astute captain and knowledgeable commentator. He may have pushed the limits of fairness in the middle but he was a decent bloke off the pitch and, let's face it, worked hard to drag cricket into the twentieth century and broaden its appeal through exciting innovation. Not how I felt at the time, but in retrospect undeniably true. Criclet worldwide, especially in Australia, will miss Tony Greig enormously.
