Was it right for Indian cricketers to choose honour over money and reject World Series Contract?

[Convict]

Great thread, I wasn't aware Vaskar and Bedi told Packer to get lost.... Kudos to the Indian players of those dayss..

Depends.

Certainly from a solely Australian point of view, World Series Cricket was an entirely legitimate move as Australian cricketers were exploited by the then ACB.

For instance there was this legendary cricket match
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/...s-queensland-gillette-cup--australia--1976-77

WA v QLD where WA defended 77 to win the one day cup semi final. Match was fully sold out and is remembered 40 years later as arguably the greatest game ever played on the WACA.

WA had Lillee, Marsh and Hughes plus five other players who later represented Australia - Laird, Serjeant, Yardley, Malone and Clarke. Justin Langer's uncle played as did James Brayshaw's father and Ric Charlesworth who played hockey for Australia more than 200 times including a world cup victory.

Queensland had Viv Richards, Greg Chappell, Jeff Thomson and two other test players - Ogilvie and Dymock.

The bloke who sold the tickets at the gate earned more money from the match than any player who took part.

WSC wasn't a moral question. It was a question about whether or not cricketers deserved a share of the revenue they generated.

 

[Napa]

Reference to this post:

The thread below

http://www.pakpassion.net/ppforum/showthread.php?173554-No-Indian-in-Kerry-Packer-s-WSC

If the goal of to maximize trolling, it makes sense to troll both sides

 

[Junaids]

[MENTION=132916]Junaids[/MENTION] interesting perspective and I won't deny I enjoy when you make such posts as opposed to baiting/trolling.

But beamers were still used liberally by the WI quicks in that Jamaica test, all under the pretence of slippery hands. Why would Sunny lie in his book 'Sunny days' as well as the interview to Sportstar (post #43)?

Sunny didn't retire hurt in that match, he had a big enmity with Bedi but didn't use this incident to tarnish the latter's image and believe me the Mumbaikar was/is a vindictive person. In fact he devoted a whole chapter in 'Sunny Days' titled 'Barbarism in Kingston' to defend Bedi's action. I remember once when Sunny brought up this story in the commentary booth with Holding by his side, when the subject of beamers came Holding merely chuckled and offered no rebut. So I am inclined to believe Sunny's version of the events.

I’ve refrained from saying too much the last few days because I was away from home, lacked access to my cricket book collection and I wanted to be sure of my facts as this is a serious discussion.

I got home tonight and consulted the two sources which are probably the most credible for home West Indies Test series in the pre-TV era.

The first was Professor Hilary Beckles’ West Indies Cricket history books, which barely touched on it.

But the second one was Michael Manley’s “History of West Indies Cricket”, which wrote at length of this Test with good reason: it was held at Kingston in Jamaica, he was there, and he was the Prime Minister of Jamaica at the time!

Manley writes that Roberts was not selected as he was worn out after bowling at 150+ for the preceding 5-1 defeat in Australia.

He writes that Holding broke through as a genuinely express bowler in that series, but he reinforces what I already knew - Julien and Holder were medium pacers.

I learned that Bedi declared in the First Innings as well as the Second, in both cases to protect himself and Chandrasekhar from facing express bowling. I’d forgotten that the First Innings was also declared: Gaekwad had a nasty head injury from a bouncer, Viswanath had a broken hand from a failed leg glance, and Patel had advanced down the wicket to the trundler Holder and top-edged a pull up into his mouth.

There is no mention at all of beamers, and Manley would have denounced them if they had happened. He writes, as I remembered, of how the West Indies team in Australia had been toughened up from an amateur era to an era in which even tailenders received express bowling. They had got home, implemented the same lessons against India and come up against a Bishan Bedi who was affronted by the Gentleman’s game becoming a professional sport.

My take, to be honest, is this. Gavaskar was an ATG opener, but is afforded excessive praise for his performances in the West Indies because his superb series there pre-dated the West Indies pace attack.

His performances in 1975-76 and 1982-83 in the West Indies were decent but fell far short of his 1970-71 exploits of 774 runs while Croft, Holding, Garner and Marshall were still at school, and when Roberts was 3 years away from his Test debut.

But to paint the surrender in the Kingston Test of 1975-76 as a protest against beamers creates a narrative of West Indian foul play and barbarism, and distracts from Gavaskar’s greatly reduced returns against a better bowling attack.

The only accounts of beamers and barbarism come from the members of the team which surrendered the series by declaring 6 down in one innings and 5 down in the next.

I think we have to accept Michael Manley’s eyewitness account and move on.

 

[Swashbuckler]

I’ve refrained from saying too much the last few days because I was away from home, lacked access to my cricket book collection and I wanted to be sure of my facts as this is a serious discussion.

I got home tonight and consulted the two sources which are probably the most credible for home West Indies Test series in the pre-TV era.

The first was Professor Hilary Beckles’ West Indies Cricket history books, which barely touched on it.

But the second one was Michael Manley’s “History of West Indies Cricket”, which wrote at length of this Test with good reason: it was held at Kingston in Jamaica, he was there, and he was the Prime Minister of Jamaica at the time!

Manley writes that Roberts was not selected as he was worn out after bowling at 150+ for the preceding 5-1 defeat in Australia.

He writes that Holding broke through as a genuinely express bowler in that series, but he reinforces what I already knew - Julien and Holder were medium pacers.

I learned that Bedi declared in the First Innings as well as the Second, in both cases to protect himself and Chandrasekhar from facing express bowling. I’d forgotten that the First Innings was also declared: Gaekwad had a nasty head injury from a bouncer, Viswanath had a broken hand from a failed leg glance, and Patel had advanced down the wicket to the trundler Holder and top-edged a pull up into his mouth.

There is no mention at all of beamers, and Manley would have denounced them if they had happened. He writes, as I remembered, of how the West Indies team in Australia had been toughened up from an amateur era to an era in which even tailenders received express bowling. They had got home, implemented the same lessons against India and come up against a Bishan Bedi who was affronted by the Gentleman’s game becoming a professional sport.

My take, to be honest, is this. Gavaskar was an ATG opener, but is afforded excessive praise for his performances in the West Indies because his superb series there pre-dated the West Indies pace attack.

His performances in 1975-76 and 1982-83 in the West Indies were decent but fell far short of his 1970-71 exploits of 774 runs while Croft, Holding, Garner and Marshall were still at school, and when Roberts was 3 years away from his Test debut.

But to paint the surrender in the Kingston Test of 1975-76 as a protest against beamers creates a narrative of West Indian foul play and barbarism, and distracts from Gavaskar’s greatly reduced returns against a better bowling attack.

The only accounts of beamers and barbarism come from the members of the team which surrendered the series by declaring 6 down in one innings and 5 down in the next.

I think we have to accept Michael Manley’s eyewitness account and move on.

Why?

Sunny said after the 2008 Monkeygate test: "Millions of Indians want to know if it was a white man taking the white man's word against that of the brown man". He was talking about Procter (match referee) and assuming you are a white Englishman, I will rephrase it as " Indian PPers want to know if it is Junaids taking the white man's word against that of the brown man".

Why should Manley's words hold more weight than Gavaskar's? Obviously the Jamaican ex-PM won't talk ill about his side. Sunny was Bedi's number 1 enemy, he did everything in his power to humiliate Bedi, why would he let go this golden opportunity to slam his leadership in his memoirs? I have elders in my family who listened to radio commentary of that match and they told me about the beamers by Holding with no action by match officials. So from my side there is more than 1 account of this disgraceful lack of sportsmanship by WI. Maybe the 406 chase in POS hurt their ego and after many months of losing they wanted to hit back with venom.

Gavaskar may be afforded extra praise but that is true for every old era player. His peers Viv, Barry, Greg Chappell, Miandad etc all receive extra praise and I can prove that if you want. Nostalgia makes us glorify the past and under rate the present, true for every single sport. Sunny did very well in the 1975-76 series, scoring 390 runs@56, 2 100s including a match winning 4th innings ton in a record chase in the 3rd test. He has no need to defend his performance in that series and (doubly sure) absolutely no need to let Bedi off the hook over what happened in Sabina Park.

 

[Junaids]

Why?

Sunny said after the 2008 Monkeygate test: "Millions of Indians want to know if it was a white man taking the white man's word against that of the brown man". He was talking about Procter (match referee) and assuming you are a white Englishman, I will rephrase it as " Indian PPers want to know if it is Junaids taking the white man's word against that of the brown man".

Why should Manley's words hold more weight than Gavaskar's? Obviously the Jamaican ex-PM won't talk ill about his side. Sunny was Bedi's number 1 enemy, he did everything in his power to humiliate Bedi, why would he let go this golden opportunity to slam his leadership in his memoirs? I have elders in my family who listened to radio commentary of that match and they told me about the beamers by Holding with no action by match officials. So from my side there is more than 1 account of this disgraceful lack of sportsmanship by WI. Maybe the 406 chase in POS hurt their ego and after many months of losing they wanted to hit back with venom.

Gavaskar may be afforded extra praise but that is true for every old era player. His peers Viv, Barry, Greg Chappell, Miandad etc all receive extra praise and I can prove that if you want. Nostalgia makes us glorify the past and under rate the present, true for every single sport. Sunny did very well in the 1975-76 series, scoring 390 runs@56, 2 100s including a match winning 4th innings ton in a record chase in the 3rd test. He has no need to defend his performance in that series and (doubly sure) absolutely no need to let Bedi off the hook over what happened in Sabina Park.

Don’t worry, my friend, I view this as a serious thread and I’m not going to resort to Indian-baiting.

I have a few responses.

I followed closely Michael Manley’s career both as a left-leaning Prime Minister (closely affiliated with Mrs Gandhi) and as a cricket historian.

He was racked with distaste and uncertainty about times in the 1970’s and 1980’s when the West Indies either overdid the short balls or reached Kohli-style levels of on-field behaviour (notably the skipper Viv Richards when they hosted England in 1989-90.)

If he expressed distaste at too much short-pitched bowling, I’d be flabbergasted if he’d witnessed more than one Beamer and kept quiet.

As for Gavaskar, my opinions are almost identical to what you wrote earlier in this thread. An ATG opener, yes. His final Test Innings was the greatest in my lifetime.

But he was also vain, self-centred and at times unpleasant, such as when he got a poor LBW decision in Australia and made his opening partner Chetan Chauhan leave the game with him.

To be honest, yes I can imagine him exaggerating the behaviour of the opposition to make his previously superhuman record in the West Indies look valid.

I know we enjoy winding each other up on this forum, but there have been lots of highly intelligent debates with [MENTION=79064]MMHS[/MENTION] and [MENTION=134300]Tusker[/MENTION] about when cricket evolved from the amateur era to the modern game.

I think the answer is Packer. His squads were drilled hard and had full-time fitness staff.

But the starting gun was Lillee and Thomson smashing England in 74-75 and the West Indies in 75-76. Those two had the benefits of a rich country’s diet and an athletic, outdoor childhood.

England’s response was just to call up David Steele and Brian Close and John Edrich, three pros who had faced the pace of Trueman and Snow.

But the West Indies responded differently, by making themselves into a ruthlessly professional outfit.

They met India first who were appalled at this menace to the gentleman’s game. Then they met England’s army of geriatrics.

But then Pakistan toured, led by Bedi’s brother Mushtaq Mohammad. And while they lost narrowly 2-1 to a four man pace attack (mainly because of the Old World negativity of Mushtaq), Imran Khan And Javed Miandad has seen enough to see where the world was going, and Packer’s circus was the University for them, the Aussies and the West Indians.

If you ask me, it bought Pakistan an advantage over India going into the newly professional and ruthless cricket world, and that advantage lasted until around the year 2000.

 

[Junaids]

Lastly, [MENTION=143530]Swashbuckler[/MENTION], Monkeygate wasn’t a white referee taking the white man’s word over the brown man.

It was a white referee whom the whole world knows not to be racist (whose life savings promote the wellbeing of non-whites in South Africa) adjudicating a case in which a black Australian claimed to have been racially abused by an Indian with the same word “monkey” that was filmed on crowd placards in India a few months earlier.

And don’t forget, Tendulkar gave evidence which supported Symonds, until he then recanted it.

 

[Swashbuckler]

[MENTION=132916]Junaids[/MENTION] good insights, pleasure interacting with you when you are in this mode. I don't concur with all you said, so let us agree to disagree over here. But I respect your views and at the end of the day disagreement (as long as it is civil) isn't a bad thing at all, it opens our blind spots and widens our perspective of the game and other facets of life. I must admit that being a relatively new member and an irregular poster I may have had erroneous opinions about some of the posters on this forum, and that includes you. So apologize if I may have appeared irate on some earlier occasions, hope to have more well mannered debates with you in the future.

 

[Iqbal'sh]

There is one beamer that Holding bowled at Gavaskar which I have viewed many times over. As far as I am aware this was the only one, and Holding was quick to hold his hand up in apology.
The West Indies team too had been on the receiving end of hostile pace bowling on their tour Down Under, their captain, Clive Lloyd, learnt from that experience. Following the second test in the India series (where they were unable to defend 400 plus runs) he decided that from there on he was going to play to his strengths - a brand of cricket that belonged in an era of professionalism and certainty not for the faint hearted.

 

[rollingstoned]

This is untrue from start to finish.

The first modern West Indian to bowl round the wicket to Indians was Malcolm Marshall in 1982-83.

The actual chain of events was this.

1. West Indies are blown away 5-1 in Australia by Lillee and Thomson in 75-76 in front of baying, hostile, racist crowds.

2. West Indies skipper Clive Lloyd accepts that the game has just become harder and more professional, with even tailenders now subject to receiving occasional bouncers - previously a gentleman’s Agreement minimised that.

3. When the West Indies returned home, Lloyd switched to a pace-based strategy.

4. This led to an ideological clash with Bishan Bedi, who believed that even wicketkeepers should never be bounced, and certainly bowlers never should be.

5. At Kingston, a couple of Indians were hit and two of the bowlers damaged their hands dropping catches.

6. With the team only a dozen runs ahead and with no remaining batsmen, Bishan Bedi realised that the team was going to lose, and decided to make a protest against the unsporting use of any fast or short bowling against the tail.

I saw Bedi interviewed about it on the BBC that summer (while he was playing county cricket while the West Indies toured England).

I felt some sympathy for him. He represented an earlier gentleman’s game which was being replaced with one in which tailenders had to be able to bat and bowlers had to be able to field.

The modern game was more brutal, and helmets didn’t arrive until Kerry Packer introduced them the following year.

But the West Indies weren’t bowling bodyline. They only had two 150+ bowlers.

They were bowling like Shami did at Perth last week. And they were dishing out what they had only just received in Australia.

The World was changing, fast!

Fire in babylon. such a good movie that chronicles the rise of that west indian team from the mid 70s.