It’s unfair to describe the current Australia-England one-day cricket series as meaningless. It has meaning for the participants and for those watching, few though they may be. Baffling perhaps, poorly scheduled, but meaningless? Whatever its meaning is, it is made concrete in international cricket records. There will be no asterisk next to Dawid Malan’s very fine century in Adelaide on Thursday to say ‘Not sure why they were playing or what it meant’. An international hundred is an international hundred.
Exactly 45 years ago, some of the most meaningful international cricket was played, and yet it is still being ghosted by the International Cricket Council.
Consider what World Series Cricket started and what it left behind. Cricket played under lights in coloured clothing with a white ball – the sport’s most influential innovation since 1877. Drop-in pitches. Field restrictions to enhance limited-overs cricket. Life-saving helmets. Cameras down the pitch from both ends. Stump microphones. The packaging of the game to provide careers for players who would otherwise have been lost.
There is not enough room here to summarise the Packer revolution. Its legacy is now incorporated into formats, including Test cricket, that have their status reverentially protected and curated by the International Cricket Council.
All of its legacy is acknowledged, except what the players did.
WSC might have seemed meaningless in the early summer of 1977, thanks to loyalty to ‘establishment cricket’ and the initial weirdness of the WSC presentation. If you saw the first ‘Supertest’ (the word ‘Test’ was protected by ICC copyright), you weren’t quite sure what you were watching. Some of the players seemed to be wearing WSC merch. You could hear the players’ bats tap the crease and hit the ball, you could hear their boots scrape the turf as they bowled, and you could hear them swear at each other.
Ian Chappell drives the ball from Asif Iqbal at VFL Park.Credit:The Age Archives
Occasionally, you also heard them swear at an interviewer as they came off. You got disoriented because the game appeared to be played from just one end, until you realised that you weren’t watching half the game from behind the wicketkeeper’s back anymore because – amazingly – cricket telecasting now had cameras at each end. It was very quiet: there was practically nobody in VFL Park. At first. But soon, because of the players and the games, spectators came and things got very noisy.
What earned WSC its credibility and audience was the exploits of the best cricketers seen before or since. All-time greats like the Chappells, Dennis Lillee, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Imran Khan and Barry Richards said it was the toughest, most competitive, most serious cricket they ever played. The West Indies’ rise from ‘Calypso cricketers’ to an unmatched world force took place during World Series. Over two seasons in Australia and one in the West Indies, a short tour of New Zealand and a long one of grateful Australian country centres, some astonishing games and achievements took place.
The spine still tingles at footage of Wayne Daniel clubbing Mick Malone for six off the last ball to win one of the first-ever night matches.
That, and the inaugural Sydney Cricket Ground day-night match in front of a crowd that literally could not be counted because the gates were thrown open, marked the birth of cricket under lights.
Wayne Daniels sends Mick Malone for a zac off the last ball
Individually, Greg Chappell would be unquestionably rated Australia’s second-best batter after Don Bradman if his 1415 Supertest runs were added to his 7110 official runs. Imagine averaging more than 50 against the quickest pace attack on some rough and ready but always spicy pitches. The standing of Lillee, both of the Richards, Lloyd, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and many others would be burnished if their statistics were incorporated into their official Test numbers.
But those are, as Ian Chappell and others said when Cricket Australia decided to ‘recognise’ them in a separate category in 2015, just numbers. For the greats, the stats just make them greater.
Consider some of the others. Australia’s Rob Langer and Wayne Prior, the West Indies’ Jim Allen and South Africa’s Clive Rice and Garth Le Roux are not officially ‘Test’ cricketers, yet they played Supertests of higher calibre than most Test cricket seen in their lifetimes. Many others whose official international records are fleeting would be dignified with the substance they deserve if their WSC records were recognised. Bruce Laird, as one example among many, scored three Supertest hundreds against Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Colin Croft. Laird never made a century in his 21 official Test matches. After 45 years, it’s time.
There have been periodic pushes to get WSC recognised, and the arguments against it get weaker over time. It used to be maintained that as the laws of cricket, also under ICC copyright, did not apply to WSC, they weren’t ‘real’ Test matches. Baloney. All sorts of rogue variations – three-day Tests, timeless Tests, private tours, exhibitions – are incorporated into official records going back to 1877. There is nothing fixed and sanctified about ‘Test cricket’ that can bar Supertests from official status. The fact that some Supertests were played by a World XI does not rule them out either, as the ICC recognises other World XI fixtures. Several dozen WSC one-day internationals also deserve official recognition.
The only conceivable reason for the ICC’s ongoing inaction is that the two countries that were significantly under-represented in WSC, England and India, now the most powerful in the game, have no stake in it. If cricket were steered instead by Australia, the West Indies and Pakistan, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
When it can be hard to find the meaning in some of today’s fixtures, why is it important to give it to those that took place 45 years ago? It is a sad matter to state why this should be a frontline issue. The youngest WSC players are now close to seventy, and the oldest – West Indian Lance Gibbs – is 88. Fellow West Indian David Holford passed away this year at 82. The cricket world lost Rod Marsh, Ashley Mallett, Gary Gilmour, David Hookes, Tony Greig and Bob Woolmer before their WSC contributions were given their due.
Imran is facing more pressing matters than his cricket record, but the least the cricket world can do is to fully respect these players’ place in history while they can still appreciate it. There are many ways a sporting event can be given meaning. Meaning is fluid, and may not just evaporate with time. One-day cricket will come to its senses and fix this anomaly. Why wait until it’s too late for those who care most?
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