One of the great misnomers of Australian cricket is that there was much in the way of “mystery” to the no balling of Ian Meckiff by Colin Egar for throwing during the Test match against South Africa at the Gabba in 1963.
If there are any missing pieces, it is only the fact no one ever explicitly warned Meckiff that, upon his recall to the Test team to face South Africa in Brisbane 59 years ago, he was walking into something that was as close as propriety could possibly get to a premeditated ambush.
Ian Meckiff delivers during the over in which he was no-balled four times by umpire Colin Egar.Credit:Clive MacKinnon
Sir Donald Bradman, unchallenged as the most powerful figure in Australian cricket for more than 40 years after his retirement in 1948 – until Kerry Packer entered the scene at least – had concluded during the season of 1962-63 that “chucking” was still the most urgent issue afflicting cricket.
This followed some years of complaints from English cricket authorities, many of whom were very close to Bradman, that umpires had been too lenient on bowling actions. Not only in Australia, but across the world. Meckiff had been a pivotal figure in the 1958-59 Ashes series, though inconsistency and injury had seen him play a sporadic role in the national team in the intervening years. That was until the retirement of Alan Davidson gave the selectors, Bradman among them, a reason to recall him.
And yet they did not do so without considerable background briefing that throwing had become the foremost ill in the game. Before the summer, Bradman lectured umpires in South Australia, of which Egar was the most senior, about the problem of illegal bowling actions. State cricketers were also present.
“The request, it wasn’t an instruction, from Sir Donald was to all of us that this illegal bowling was becoming too prevalent and was a nuisance to the game and had also been in the game around the turn of the century. If possible, cricket would like the help of players and umpires to do something about it,” Egar said in a 2002 ABC documentary.
Ian Meckiff is chaired off the field by spectators after the innings.Credit:Clive MacKinnon
“I realised that there was a responsibility to an extent. I knew what the law was. I knew what illegal bowlers were all about, and I thought ‘well, I suppose I’ll have to become involved’, which I did. I was at square leg to the second over, and of course I did call Ian because, in my opinion, what the law stated and what I was looking at, was illegal. It’s not as simple as that, but that’s what happened, I’ll put it that way.”
Bradman had also held a private audience at his Kensington home for cricketers including Australia’s then-skipper Richie Benaud about exactly the same issue in late January of the preceding summer, during the Adelaide Test match against England. “At that meeting,” Benaud told Gideon Haigh in The Summer Game, “I said I would not again bowl anyone called for throwing, or whom I thought was throwing.”
Meckiff, too, had dined at Bradman’s home and been shown film footage of various bowling actions, including that of Harold Larwood reversed to look like a left-armer. But there was no accompanying lecture on illegal bowling actions. “He never really said anything about ‘you’ve got to change your action or you can’t play’ or that sort of thing, no,” Meckiff told Margaret Geddes in Remembering Bradman.
English cricket officials, with whom Bradman corresponded regularly and voluminously over his 40 years at the head of Australian cricket’s administration, were watching the 1963-64 season closely, as the team led by Benaud but then Bob Simpson were to be touring England in the northern summer.
Australian captain Richie Benaud (left) with Keith Slater (center) and Ian Meckiff (right).Credit:The Age Archives
In truth, Bradman’s attitude had been largely influenced by exchanges of views with English administrators, including his former opponent “Gubby” Allen, and the MCC’s president Harry Altham. Driven largely by English irritation at what they saw to be illegal Australian bowling actions, an understanding had been reached that on the 1961 Ashes tour, no bowler would be called for throwing prior to the first Test, but umpiring opinions of actions would be privately conveyed. As it was, no bowler of suspicious delivery made the trip, as neither Meckiff nor Gordon Rorke were considered. But two years later things had changed.
Team balance suggested that the selectors recognised the possibility that not all bowlers would be available throughout. Five were chosen, compelling Benaud to bat as high as No.6, a position he occupied just three times in 27 previous Tests as captain.
If any more circumstantial evidence is needed, it comes through the fact that Bradman and Egar shared part of the journey from Adelaide to Brisbane for the first Test of the 1963-64 series, in which there were plentiful opportunities for further undocumented discussion of the throwing problem and the Australian Cricket Board’s strong view that umpires were required to “stand up and be counted”.
Egar, having gained some notoriety for his strong officiating during the unforgettable 1960-61 series between Australia and the West Indies, was by this time on his way up the ladder in the game’s ranks of senior figures.
Meckiff was called for throwing four times in one over, compelling Benaud to immediately remove him from the bowling attack and not recall him for the remainder of what became his final competitive match.
Egar then began a rise to positions on the boards of the South Australian Cricket Association, the ACB, and ultimately the exalted post of chairman from 1989 to 1992. He was also team manager on the ugly tour of Pakistan in 1988, where Egar was as much a participant in the ill-feeling about umpiring decisions as any of the players.
Interviewed many times, Meckiff has always described a sense of shock about the episode, but at the same time made it plain that during the rest day of the Test, Bradman sat him down for a long chat to essentially tell him that his career was over.
After Egar and Benaud carried out the duties Bradman had ascribed to them, it was down to the senior figure to try to ensure Meckiff exited gracefully – accepting the umpire’s decision. Meanwhile, global cricket authorities rested easy at how a looming threat to the game, perceived or otherwise, had been very publicly knocked on the head.
Whether Bradman’s prescribed medicine for illegal bowling actions was deemed appropriate for the moment or overly harsh, unfeeling and calculating is something that will continue to be debated so long as the game is played. Certainly in the post-Muttiah Muralitharan world, it is considered most appropriate that bowlers are given the chance to work on their methods in private, without the harsh experience of being “called for throwing” in front of the eyes of the world.
But it is overly kind to the figures arrayed around Meckiff, if not outright disingenuous, to suggest there is “mystery” about how and why he was so ingloriously marched out of the game in 1963. Had Meckiff been given the explicit advice that those searching for an answer to the supposed riddle have always sought, then the whole ugly spectacle at the Gabba would never have happened.
These, though, were the days when many such conversations did not take place. Bill Lawry, then a young member of the Test team, would be sacked as captain and dropped as a player in 1971 without so much as a cursory phone call from Bradman’s panel to tell him he was out. Journalists found out first. Meckiff, certainly, is under few illusions.
“It was a set-up thing, but until someone turns around and tells me that it was, I’m still not going to say Richie Benaud set it up, or Bradman set it up or anyone,” he told Geddes. “I think it will come out eventually. I’m pretty sure that it was a deal that was done with the English cricket board, with Gubby Allen, because of the tour coming up, and most of the so-called suspect action players like myself had retired.”
And to claim there was – or needed to be – any more formal collusion between Bradman, Benaud and Egar than what is already obvious in the pages of published history would be to suggest that anyone in Australian cricket in 1963 needed anything more than a subtle hint as to what Bradman thought and desired.
Such thinking is as heedless to history as the notion that the assassination of JFK, just two weeks prior, would have required a vast and documented conspiracy to carry off.
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