Sakss
Test Debutant
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2009
- Runs
- 14,207
Michael Holding started playing cricket seriously in 1972 and in a career spanning 17 years, made his name as one of the greatest pace bowlers in history. A commentator since he hung up his boots, Holding is known for saying it like he sees it and having strong opinions on most contentious matters in cricket.
Speaking to Wisden India here, Holding holds forth about his own playing days and how things were different then, the biggest ills affecting the game today, the deterioration of fast bowling as well as batting technique against fast bowlers, and more. Excerpts:
Close to 50 years of playing cricket and commentating on the sport, what would you say has changed for better?
First of all, I don’t think it’s close to 50 years. I don’t want to feel that old (laughs). I think the most important thing is the fact that a lot of people are now fitter. Even watching the game, the games India have played recently, you can see the high level of fitness of the cricketers. In the 1950-1960s and even in the 1970s, the Indian cricketers were nowhere near as fit as that. And I think it’s a general thing you are seeing throughout the game, everybody has gotten a lot fitter, everybody has hit the gym, they are a lot stronger, and I think that has improved a lot of things in the game.
What changes have not necessarily been for the better?
What I particularly don’t like is the amount of cricket being played now. I think it is being watered down. There’s just too much cricket being played. Years gone by, people used to look forward to a Test series. Now Test series are going on and people aren’t even aware that there is a Test series going on because there’s cricket being played somewhere almost every day of the year. And that is one aspect that I’m not at all happy with.
People will say okay, the game is spreading. That means more and more teams are playing and we’ve got find a way of fitting them in. But as an old fogey, I like hearing about a Test series and looking forward to it, then thinking when is the next one coming up, instead of two or three Test series going on, all at the same time. So much cricket is being played that people have to think about rotation of the people in the team. And when people get injured, how long it is going to take for them to come back? I don’t think that is lifting the quality of cricket.
How much did World Series Cricket change things? I remember reading in your book that it was the first time you saw four digits in your bank account.
Well, that was a big figure. As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I certainly would not have become a professional cricketer and perhaps would have got a nine-to-five job.
When World Series Cricket started I was at the university. I had been given a scholarship by the then Prime Minister of Jamaica Michael Manley, and I was doing computer science and looking forward to doing a regular job. Perhaps a lot of the batsmen are now sorry that Kerry Packer came along!
But I think Packer not just changed my life but he changed the game for the better. At that time there were a lot of people who were against him, against the players who went to join Packer. I remember them calling us mercenaries and talking about the Packer circus. Looking back now, even the English cricket board, who were the most venomous against him, will look back and say it helped the game.
Administrators around the world are saying Test cricket is the main product, the pinnacle of the game. How do you square those statements with what you see as the ground reality right now?
From what I can see, the administrators keep on talking but the actions don’t match the talk. It doesn’t seem they are trying to preserve Test cricket. It doesn’t seem they are trying to make sure that Test cricket is No. 1. It seems to me that they are having Test cricket only because they can’t get rid of it, or they should not get rid of it. They are more inclined to think about the form of the game that brings in a lot of money. And I am not trying to tell anyone money is not important. Cash is very important in administration of the game. But you have to have a balance and, as far as I am concerned, there’s no balance in regards to the primacy of Test match cricket.
Twenty20 leagues have mushroomed around the world. Can you actually see Test cricket being squeezed out of the calendar – apart from a marquee series like the Ashes, maybe?
Michael Atherton asked me a question similar to this a couple of years ago in England. He was writing an article and wanted my opinion on what I thought would happen to Test cricket, and he asked me if I thought Test cricket would die in the next 20 years. And my opinion was ‘No, I don’t think Test cricket would die. Test cricket will still be around but it will get insignificant. It won’t be anything people will look forward to and want to play or want to see.’
I think what is happening is everyone wants to see the shorter form of the game because it’s more exciting. When 50-over cricket came in, everybody gravitated towards 50-over cricket and 50-over cricket brought in a lot of people who never watched Test cricket. Some of those people started to watch Test cricket because they were introduced to it by 50-over cricket. And everyone said 50-over cricket is a saviour for the game.
People got a bit tired of 50-over cricket because it was so long, although initially it was the best thing around. So they brought in T20 cricket and this is the best thing ever. Everyone is saying T20 cricket is the saviour of the game and everyone wants their own domestic league and that’s bringing in all the money, bringing in all the new audiences.
As I’ve said to people, and I am waiting for them to prove me wrong, people who are attracted to T20 cricket won’t be attracted to Test cricket. They won’t move on to Test cricket. And what I’ll also tell people is that very shortly, people will also be tired of T20 cricket, they’ll say it’s too long and it’ll soon become Ten10. And then, after that, perhaps Five5. So I don’t know which direction are we going in.
How can you incentivise Test cricket? I remember doing some sums when the Indian Premier League began and Ishant Sharma was making as much money for bowling one IPL over as he did playing an entire season of playing Test match cricket for India. So how do you expect players to prioritise Test cricket? How can we make it more attractive?
If I were a young man today, I would go and play in the IPL. I would earn as much money as I possibly can in as quick a time as I possibly can. Anybody would do that. If they are working 40 hours a week and getting ten dollars and somebody offers them a 20-hour week to earn 30-40 dollars, they are going to do the 20-hour week. Doesn’t matter if that’s a job that they don’t particularly like. They are going to do the 20-hour week because it gives them more money, gives them more longevity as far as their life and what they can do for their kids are concerned. So I am never going to blame any cricketer who wants to play T20 and wants to earn the maximum amount of money in the quickest amount of time. I blame administrators. Just as you look at the families: I don’t blame the kids, I blame the parents. So I blame the administrators. They are the one who are supposed to look at what is going on and grab a hold of it before we lose it.
Where do you stand on the ICC Test Championship? Do you believe there’s a future in a Test championship or do you think it’s an artificial sort of construct where you have a one-match playoff in neutral conditions in which no one is really interested?
I don’t think the World Test Championship makes sense. When I heard about it initially, I wasn’t in agreement with it, I didn’t think it made sense and apparently it is stillborn. I am not too sure if they are going to try and revive it at some point but I don’t think it makes sense. I don’t think you can have a Test championship over such a long period of time and then end up with one Test match. Wherever that Test match is, there’s a possibility of bad weather or a draw. So your efforts of spending all this time building up towards a Test match that is supposed to identify the best team in the world could end up in a draw. I don’t believe in that. Again, if it is going to be spread over such a long time, by the time we get to the finals, the team that started four years ago might be a different team. So you are thinking about a Test nation, not a Test team. And I don’t really believe in that.
Coming to the West Indies in Test cricket – there was a time when West Indies were the biggest drawcard; you were invited to Australia pretty much every year to either play One-Day Internationals or Test cricket. The last time West Indies played a five-match series in Australia was in 2000 and the series are getting shorter and shorter. They don’t get long tours of England anymore either. How much do you think that has affected cricket in the Caribbean, the fact that the popularity of the team has gone down?
I don’t think that has affected cricket in the Caribbean; I think that’s the general direction in which cricket is going. The only teams that are now getting five Test matches are the Ashes, which is England and Australia, and, of course, the teams that play against India. That’s all because of finance where India is concerned, not because they think it is going to be a great series, because we have seen India go on tour and get beaten 4-0 or 4-1 or 5-0 and that cannot be a great series. But it’s financially viable to play that many Tests against India.
Apart from that you are going to see more and more three- or two-Test series. We just had a series in Dubai, where we had two Test matches between Australia and Pakistan. Those are supposed to be two good teams. That could have been a good five-Test series but they only had two. Again, because of the direction Test match cricket is going in. It wasn’t financially viable for either team, so they played two.
Coming to fast bowling and the dearth of genuinely fast bowlers in the game right now … you spoke about scheduling earlier, how much do you put down to scheduling alone?
I think it’s mainly because of the scheduling that we don’t see a lot of great fast bowlers any more. Even if not great fast bowlers, the number of fast bowlers that you see. It’s pretty difficult to ask anyone to be bowling fast nine months of the year and I mentioned this fact earlier that the teams have to think about resting players. I don’t think that’s the best way going forward in Test cricket. It might be okay for the shorter format of the game because it’s all about entertainment and being able to get back on the field whenever. But the schedule is playing havoc with cricket. I think Test cricket is great when you have a lot of fast bowlers in the teams all over the world and I am not sure if we are going to get too much of that.
If you go back to the 1980s, when you were at your peak, lots of players played county cricket and they had heavy workloads. What do you think the difference is now? Do you think international cricket takes that much more out of you?
International cricket takes much more out of you than county cricket. I played county cricket for Derbyshire for five years, I never went to the nets. It wasn’t necessary to go to the nets, all you had to do was keep yourself fit. I might have been a little different; I didn’t have to be bowling to be able to bowl a ball where I wanted to bowl it when the time came for our match.
When you see an overseas player playing county cricket, they go out there and are trying their guts out because they are overseas cricketers and they want to impress. They are being paid well and they want to make sure they perform. But there’s still a greater intensity when you are playing for your country. The English guys who have played county cricket are in a similar situation. When they are playing county cricket, yes, they want to perform, but you ramp yourself up when you play for your country. You find that extra bit of adrenaline; you find that extra bit of energy and a much higher intensity.
The four fast bowlers were central to the strategy that Clive Lloyd had. At that time, not just in the United Kingdom, but elsewhere as well, people said it was bad for the game, that it wasn’t cricket, it was intimidatory bowling. How do you look back on that phase now?
The game has changed a great deal and people’s perception and perspective have changed. People are quite happy to accept it now because England used four fast bowlers to win the Ashes in 2005. Members have said it on so many occasions in the past that when Ricky Ponting got hit in the face, at Lord’s, and there was blood, people in the stands were cheering. In our days, people would have been booing and would have said that’s not cricket.
I am happy that people are now willing to accept that fast bowling is a part of the game. A lot of teams now are looking for fast bowlers and any team that can produce four fast bowlers will play them every time and they know fast bowlers win games. And they are now happy to accept that fast bowling can win you games, and that’s what we did. We had them, we used them and we won games.
Winning games … you won a lot, Australia won a lot under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, South Africa have now gone a while without losing an away Test series. How do you contrast the team that you played for to Waugh’s Australians or the South Africans when Graeme Smith was the captain?
Because I was the member of that team, I don’t want to be comparing that team I’ve played with any other team because obviously I am going to be biased. I just leave people to look at the results, look at what happened whenever Australia played against great fast bowlers, whether there was one, two or three in the opposition. And similarly, what happened when we played. I don’t want to be comparing. I just want to leave it to the people to look and assess themselves.
The batsmen you bowled to, if I could ask you to pick out the best three.
Wow, that is a difficult task. I bowled against a lot of great batsmen. I never played a Test match against Pakistan but I played some one-dayers against them and they had some fantastic players. When you think about Test match cricket alone, here in India, I bowled against Sunil Gavaskar. When I think about English batsmen, I think about Graham Gooch and David Gower – fantastic players. My first tour to Australia, the two Chappells (Ian and Greg), may be because I was a youth and they seemed more like cathedrals than chapels. And since then, when you bowl against people like Allan Border, there were so many great people in my time. I wouldn’t be able to pick out one or two.
Are there any other passages in your career that stick out in your memory?
As a bowler, I look at instances when somebody took advantage of me or got the better of me, not just by getting runs but making you feel a little sheepish. I remember one instance bowling to Ian Chappell in Barbados during World Series Cricket, that will live with me forever. He tore me apart. He played some fantastic shots because he was a great hooker and a cutter. And in Barbados, when the ball isn’t swinging around and you know it’s not going to do much, you tend to bowl a little short and I bowled too short and he really hammered me all over the park.
There have been instances where I have bowled and got tired and have been unable to get a batsman out. Sunil Gavaskar made a double-century in 1983 in Madras. That was tough bowling to Sunil that day. But it wasn’t an innings that you go back to the dressing room and feel embarrassed about. He didn’t destroy you; he made runs and played some fantastic shots.
But that one with Ian Chappell, I certainly remember that one.
The current crop of batsmen, because they face so few genuinely quick bowlers, do you think that has led to deterioration of technique against the short ball?
That has contributed to it. Also, helmets have contributed a lot. There are batsmen who grow up on helmets. We had batsmen in the 1970s and 80s wearing helmets, but they didn’t grow up on helmets. They didn’t wear helmets at primary school or junior secondary school. So they developed a proper technique before they started using a helmet.
I think a lot of batsmen, who wear a helmet even when the spinners are bowling, have developed some bad technique when it comes to facing some good fast bowling. A lot of them take their eyes off the ball and turn their heads and backs to the ball, which is not very good. You couldn’t do it without a helmet because once you get hit on your head it can cause some serious damage. They know that they are wearing a helmet, so it’s unlikely that they’ll get seriously damaged. And that has contributed to some poor and faulty technique for some batsmen facing fast bowlers today.
The influence of senior cricketers at club level or state level, in West Indies’ case the inter-island level … when you were playing club cricket, there invariably was some Test cricketer or ex-Test player there passing on advice.
Not just ex-Test players, players who have played the game for a long time and know the game really well. When I was a young man at the Melbourne Cricket Club, I had two spinners who helped me a lot with my fast bowling. They just knew the game. One was Arthur Barrett, a legspinner who played for the West Indies. The other was Bruce Wellington, a left-arm spinner. Both those guys played a lot of cricket, they were students of the game and they helped me grow as a young man. You don’t see it too much these days because you don’t have a lot of senior guys who are playing now at club level or even the domestic level, the first-class lever, that will help the youngsters along.
Another article that Atherton wrote recently in England – I keep on mentioning his name because I think he’s great writer, he has written some fantastic articles – he made a mention of the fact that there are not too many senior spinners now in English cricket because of the high emphasis on fitness.
Someone like Jack Simmons, who played for Lancashire … Simmons played perhaps into his 40s, I don’t remember how old he was when he retired but no one could tell him to go the gym and lift weights, run 20 miles and that sort of a thing. That would not be accepted in English cricket today. So people like Simmons would have gone out of the game. And that is why you don’t have players learning from the senior people so much in all aspects, not just in the Caribbean, in England, in many places because of the high emphasis on fitness. And that is where cricket has missed out again. Sure, you want to be fit and at the same time you cannot use the same scale to measure everyone.
Again, it is mainly because of the amount of cricket being played. It is difficult for guys to play international cricket for seven-eight months and then come back and play two months of domestic cricket. It is just a lot of cricket and they are hoping to get a little bit of rest. Sure, some guys, particularly the batsman, would want to play but it is difficult for the fast bowlers. Fast bowling is hard work, it’s very strenuous work and you can’t expect anyone to bowl fast nine months a year.
http://www.wisdenindia.com/interview/packer-changed-game-better-holding/135809
Speaking to Wisden India here, Holding holds forth about his own playing days and how things were different then, the biggest ills affecting the game today, the deterioration of fast bowling as well as batting technique against fast bowlers, and more. Excerpts:
Close to 50 years of playing cricket and commentating on the sport, what would you say has changed for better?
First of all, I don’t think it’s close to 50 years. I don’t want to feel that old (laughs). I think the most important thing is the fact that a lot of people are now fitter. Even watching the game, the games India have played recently, you can see the high level of fitness of the cricketers. In the 1950-1960s and even in the 1970s, the Indian cricketers were nowhere near as fit as that. And I think it’s a general thing you are seeing throughout the game, everybody has gotten a lot fitter, everybody has hit the gym, they are a lot stronger, and I think that has improved a lot of things in the game.
What changes have not necessarily been for the better?
What I particularly don’t like is the amount of cricket being played now. I think it is being watered down. There’s just too much cricket being played. Years gone by, people used to look forward to a Test series. Now Test series are going on and people aren’t even aware that there is a Test series going on because there’s cricket being played somewhere almost every day of the year. And that is one aspect that I’m not at all happy with.
People will say okay, the game is spreading. That means more and more teams are playing and we’ve got find a way of fitting them in. But as an old fogey, I like hearing about a Test series and looking forward to it, then thinking when is the next one coming up, instead of two or three Test series going on, all at the same time. So much cricket is being played that people have to think about rotation of the people in the team. And when people get injured, how long it is going to take for them to come back? I don’t think that is lifting the quality of cricket.
How much did World Series Cricket change things? I remember reading in your book that it was the first time you saw four digits in your bank account.
Well, that was a big figure. As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. I certainly would not have become a professional cricketer and perhaps would have got a nine-to-five job.
When World Series Cricket started I was at the university. I had been given a scholarship by the then Prime Minister of Jamaica Michael Manley, and I was doing computer science and looking forward to doing a regular job. Perhaps a lot of the batsmen are now sorry that Kerry Packer came along!
But I think Packer not just changed my life but he changed the game for the better. At that time there were a lot of people who were against him, against the players who went to join Packer. I remember them calling us mercenaries and talking about the Packer circus. Looking back now, even the English cricket board, who were the most venomous against him, will look back and say it helped the game.
Administrators around the world are saying Test cricket is the main product, the pinnacle of the game. How do you square those statements with what you see as the ground reality right now?
From what I can see, the administrators keep on talking but the actions don’t match the talk. It doesn’t seem they are trying to preserve Test cricket. It doesn’t seem they are trying to make sure that Test cricket is No. 1. It seems to me that they are having Test cricket only because they can’t get rid of it, or they should not get rid of it. They are more inclined to think about the form of the game that brings in a lot of money. And I am not trying to tell anyone money is not important. Cash is very important in administration of the game. But you have to have a balance and, as far as I am concerned, there’s no balance in regards to the primacy of Test match cricket.
Twenty20 leagues have mushroomed around the world. Can you actually see Test cricket being squeezed out of the calendar – apart from a marquee series like the Ashes, maybe?
Michael Atherton asked me a question similar to this a couple of years ago in England. He was writing an article and wanted my opinion on what I thought would happen to Test cricket, and he asked me if I thought Test cricket would die in the next 20 years. And my opinion was ‘No, I don’t think Test cricket would die. Test cricket will still be around but it will get insignificant. It won’t be anything people will look forward to and want to play or want to see.’
I think what is happening is everyone wants to see the shorter form of the game because it’s more exciting. When 50-over cricket came in, everybody gravitated towards 50-over cricket and 50-over cricket brought in a lot of people who never watched Test cricket. Some of those people started to watch Test cricket because they were introduced to it by 50-over cricket. And everyone said 50-over cricket is a saviour for the game.
People got a bit tired of 50-over cricket because it was so long, although initially it was the best thing around. So they brought in T20 cricket and this is the best thing ever. Everyone is saying T20 cricket is the saviour of the game and everyone wants their own domestic league and that’s bringing in all the money, bringing in all the new audiences.
As I’ve said to people, and I am waiting for them to prove me wrong, people who are attracted to T20 cricket won’t be attracted to Test cricket. They won’t move on to Test cricket. And what I’ll also tell people is that very shortly, people will also be tired of T20 cricket, they’ll say it’s too long and it’ll soon become Ten10. And then, after that, perhaps Five5. So I don’t know which direction are we going in.
How can you incentivise Test cricket? I remember doing some sums when the Indian Premier League began and Ishant Sharma was making as much money for bowling one IPL over as he did playing an entire season of playing Test match cricket for India. So how do you expect players to prioritise Test cricket? How can we make it more attractive?
If I were a young man today, I would go and play in the IPL. I would earn as much money as I possibly can in as quick a time as I possibly can. Anybody would do that. If they are working 40 hours a week and getting ten dollars and somebody offers them a 20-hour week to earn 30-40 dollars, they are going to do the 20-hour week. Doesn’t matter if that’s a job that they don’t particularly like. They are going to do the 20-hour week because it gives them more money, gives them more longevity as far as their life and what they can do for their kids are concerned. So I am never going to blame any cricketer who wants to play T20 and wants to earn the maximum amount of money in the quickest amount of time. I blame administrators. Just as you look at the families: I don’t blame the kids, I blame the parents. So I blame the administrators. They are the one who are supposed to look at what is going on and grab a hold of it before we lose it.
Where do you stand on the ICC Test Championship? Do you believe there’s a future in a Test championship or do you think it’s an artificial sort of construct where you have a one-match playoff in neutral conditions in which no one is really interested?
I don’t think the World Test Championship makes sense. When I heard about it initially, I wasn’t in agreement with it, I didn’t think it made sense and apparently it is stillborn. I am not too sure if they are going to try and revive it at some point but I don’t think it makes sense. I don’t think you can have a Test championship over such a long period of time and then end up with one Test match. Wherever that Test match is, there’s a possibility of bad weather or a draw. So your efforts of spending all this time building up towards a Test match that is supposed to identify the best team in the world could end up in a draw. I don’t believe in that. Again, if it is going to be spread over such a long time, by the time we get to the finals, the team that started four years ago might be a different team. So you are thinking about a Test nation, not a Test team. And I don’t really believe in that.
Coming to the West Indies in Test cricket – there was a time when West Indies were the biggest drawcard; you were invited to Australia pretty much every year to either play One-Day Internationals or Test cricket. The last time West Indies played a five-match series in Australia was in 2000 and the series are getting shorter and shorter. They don’t get long tours of England anymore either. How much do you think that has affected cricket in the Caribbean, the fact that the popularity of the team has gone down?
I don’t think that has affected cricket in the Caribbean; I think that’s the general direction in which cricket is going. The only teams that are now getting five Test matches are the Ashes, which is England and Australia, and, of course, the teams that play against India. That’s all because of finance where India is concerned, not because they think it is going to be a great series, because we have seen India go on tour and get beaten 4-0 or 4-1 or 5-0 and that cannot be a great series. But it’s financially viable to play that many Tests against India.
Apart from that you are going to see more and more three- or two-Test series. We just had a series in Dubai, where we had two Test matches between Australia and Pakistan. Those are supposed to be two good teams. That could have been a good five-Test series but they only had two. Again, because of the direction Test match cricket is going in. It wasn’t financially viable for either team, so they played two.
Coming to fast bowling and the dearth of genuinely fast bowlers in the game right now … you spoke about scheduling earlier, how much do you put down to scheduling alone?
I think it’s mainly because of the scheduling that we don’t see a lot of great fast bowlers any more. Even if not great fast bowlers, the number of fast bowlers that you see. It’s pretty difficult to ask anyone to be bowling fast nine months of the year and I mentioned this fact earlier that the teams have to think about resting players. I don’t think that’s the best way going forward in Test cricket. It might be okay for the shorter format of the game because it’s all about entertainment and being able to get back on the field whenever. But the schedule is playing havoc with cricket. I think Test cricket is great when you have a lot of fast bowlers in the teams all over the world and I am not sure if we are going to get too much of that.
If you go back to the 1980s, when you were at your peak, lots of players played county cricket and they had heavy workloads. What do you think the difference is now? Do you think international cricket takes that much more out of you?
International cricket takes much more out of you than county cricket. I played county cricket for Derbyshire for five years, I never went to the nets. It wasn’t necessary to go to the nets, all you had to do was keep yourself fit. I might have been a little different; I didn’t have to be bowling to be able to bowl a ball where I wanted to bowl it when the time came for our match.
When you see an overseas player playing county cricket, they go out there and are trying their guts out because they are overseas cricketers and they want to impress. They are being paid well and they want to make sure they perform. But there’s still a greater intensity when you are playing for your country. The English guys who have played county cricket are in a similar situation. When they are playing county cricket, yes, they want to perform, but you ramp yourself up when you play for your country. You find that extra bit of adrenaline; you find that extra bit of energy and a much higher intensity.
The four fast bowlers were central to the strategy that Clive Lloyd had. At that time, not just in the United Kingdom, but elsewhere as well, people said it was bad for the game, that it wasn’t cricket, it was intimidatory bowling. How do you look back on that phase now?
The game has changed a great deal and people’s perception and perspective have changed. People are quite happy to accept it now because England used four fast bowlers to win the Ashes in 2005. Members have said it on so many occasions in the past that when Ricky Ponting got hit in the face, at Lord’s, and there was blood, people in the stands were cheering. In our days, people would have been booing and would have said that’s not cricket.
I am happy that people are now willing to accept that fast bowling is a part of the game. A lot of teams now are looking for fast bowlers and any team that can produce four fast bowlers will play them every time and they know fast bowlers win games. And they are now happy to accept that fast bowling can win you games, and that’s what we did. We had them, we used them and we won games.
Winning games … you won a lot, Australia won a lot under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, South Africa have now gone a while without losing an away Test series. How do you contrast the team that you played for to Waugh’s Australians or the South Africans when Graeme Smith was the captain?
Because I was the member of that team, I don’t want to be comparing that team I’ve played with any other team because obviously I am going to be biased. I just leave people to look at the results, look at what happened whenever Australia played against great fast bowlers, whether there was one, two or three in the opposition. And similarly, what happened when we played. I don’t want to be comparing. I just want to leave it to the people to look and assess themselves.
The batsmen you bowled to, if I could ask you to pick out the best three.
Wow, that is a difficult task. I bowled against a lot of great batsmen. I never played a Test match against Pakistan but I played some one-dayers against them and they had some fantastic players. When you think about Test match cricket alone, here in India, I bowled against Sunil Gavaskar. When I think about English batsmen, I think about Graham Gooch and David Gower – fantastic players. My first tour to Australia, the two Chappells (Ian and Greg), may be because I was a youth and they seemed more like cathedrals than chapels. And since then, when you bowl against people like Allan Border, there were so many great people in my time. I wouldn’t be able to pick out one or two.
Are there any other passages in your career that stick out in your memory?
As a bowler, I look at instances when somebody took advantage of me or got the better of me, not just by getting runs but making you feel a little sheepish. I remember one instance bowling to Ian Chappell in Barbados during World Series Cricket, that will live with me forever. He tore me apart. He played some fantastic shots because he was a great hooker and a cutter. And in Barbados, when the ball isn’t swinging around and you know it’s not going to do much, you tend to bowl a little short and I bowled too short and he really hammered me all over the park.
There have been instances where I have bowled and got tired and have been unable to get a batsman out. Sunil Gavaskar made a double-century in 1983 in Madras. That was tough bowling to Sunil that day. But it wasn’t an innings that you go back to the dressing room and feel embarrassed about. He didn’t destroy you; he made runs and played some fantastic shots.
But that one with Ian Chappell, I certainly remember that one.
The current crop of batsmen, because they face so few genuinely quick bowlers, do you think that has led to deterioration of technique against the short ball?
That has contributed to it. Also, helmets have contributed a lot. There are batsmen who grow up on helmets. We had batsmen in the 1970s and 80s wearing helmets, but they didn’t grow up on helmets. They didn’t wear helmets at primary school or junior secondary school. So they developed a proper technique before they started using a helmet.
I think a lot of batsmen, who wear a helmet even when the spinners are bowling, have developed some bad technique when it comes to facing some good fast bowling. A lot of them take their eyes off the ball and turn their heads and backs to the ball, which is not very good. You couldn’t do it without a helmet because once you get hit on your head it can cause some serious damage. They know that they are wearing a helmet, so it’s unlikely that they’ll get seriously damaged. And that has contributed to some poor and faulty technique for some batsmen facing fast bowlers today.
The influence of senior cricketers at club level or state level, in West Indies’ case the inter-island level … when you were playing club cricket, there invariably was some Test cricketer or ex-Test player there passing on advice.
Not just ex-Test players, players who have played the game for a long time and know the game really well. When I was a young man at the Melbourne Cricket Club, I had two spinners who helped me a lot with my fast bowling. They just knew the game. One was Arthur Barrett, a legspinner who played for the West Indies. The other was Bruce Wellington, a left-arm spinner. Both those guys played a lot of cricket, they were students of the game and they helped me grow as a young man. You don’t see it too much these days because you don’t have a lot of senior guys who are playing now at club level or even the domestic level, the first-class lever, that will help the youngsters along.
Another article that Atherton wrote recently in England – I keep on mentioning his name because I think he’s great writer, he has written some fantastic articles – he made a mention of the fact that there are not too many senior spinners now in English cricket because of the high emphasis on fitness.
Someone like Jack Simmons, who played for Lancashire … Simmons played perhaps into his 40s, I don’t remember how old he was when he retired but no one could tell him to go the gym and lift weights, run 20 miles and that sort of a thing. That would not be accepted in English cricket today. So people like Simmons would have gone out of the game. And that is why you don’t have players learning from the senior people so much in all aspects, not just in the Caribbean, in England, in many places because of the high emphasis on fitness. And that is where cricket has missed out again. Sure, you want to be fit and at the same time you cannot use the same scale to measure everyone.
Again, it is mainly because of the amount of cricket being played. It is difficult for guys to play international cricket for seven-eight months and then come back and play two months of domestic cricket. It is just a lot of cricket and they are hoping to get a little bit of rest. Sure, some guys, particularly the batsman, would want to play but it is difficult for the fast bowlers. Fast bowling is hard work, it’s very strenuous work and you can’t expect anyone to bowl fast nine months a year.
http://www.wisdenindia.com/interview/packer-changed-game-better-holding/135809
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