The Shorter Wisden 2013 (40 page)

Gibson nicknamed “Hoot” in tribute to an American cowboy actor called Hoot Gibson, retired at the end of that summer, after taking 552 wickets at 22 in 185 matches, and scoring 3,143
runs at almost 19. He had already taken MCC coaching qualifications and, at the behest of Stewart, the county’s new cricket manager, he returned to The Oval in 1979 as county coach. Stewart
said: “He was very good technically with bowlers – excellent at getting the information across in a way that could be understood.” Later, Gibson emigrated to Australia and moved
to Bowral. One day in 2007, he arrived at the Bradman Museum and offered his services, mentioning that he “knew a bit about the game”. He became a popular guide, and a kindly coach to
children visiting the nets. “We were honoured to have such a distinguished Pommy in our midst,” said the curator David Wells. “Ill health forced his withdrawal from volunteering,
but he did manage to attend the opening of the International Cricket Hall of Fame in November 2010, and I vividly remember him proudly wearing his Surrey blazer.”

GIFFORD
, JOSHUA THOMAS,
MBE
, who died on February 9, aged 70, was a giant in British horse racing. In the first half of his career,
Josh Gifford was champion National Hunt jockey on four occasions; in the second, he became one of racing’s most successful trainers, for ever associated with the storybook triumph of Aldaniti
in the 1981 Grand National. Yet visitors to Gifford’s yard in Findon, on the Sussex Downs, were often left wondering if he hadn’t chosen the wrong sport. There were cricket pictures on
the walls of his home, cricket books on the shelves, and a faithful dog called Sobers. He regretted, he said, not making more of the talent he showed as a boy and, although a batsman, remained
proud of dismissing Brian Lara in a charity match. He had his own wandering XI and, every September, Alan Lee – the former cricket correspondent of
The Times
who now covers racing
– took a team to the lovely sloping ground at Findon, where Gifford was by turns cussed opening batsman and generous host. “Despite being so late in the season,” said Lee,
“the sun shone every time for 21 years.”

GLASGOW
, CARL VIDAL, who died on March 23, aged 69, was secretary and legal adviser to the Windward Islands Cricket Board for many years, and managed the
Windward Islands team. Julian Hunte, the West Indies board president, called him “one of the stalwarts of cricket development in these islands”.

GODSON
, ALFRED THOMAS, died on May 4, aged 94. Fred Godson umpired 29 first-class matches, all at the Adelaide Oval, between 1961-62 and 1973-74. In November
1969, it was the genial Godson and his fellow umpire Col Egar who recalled John Inverarity (now Australia’s chief selector) after he was bowled by an abruptly deviating ball from Greg
Chappell in a Sheffield Shield match between South Australia and Western Australia. A swallow was found near the pitch; the umpires called dead ball for the dead bird; Inverarity resumed his
innings, and took his score from nought to 89.

GOURLEY
, IAN, who died on December 7, 2012, aged 70, was a stalwart of the Woodvale club in Belfast. For some years he was treasurer of the Irish cricket
board, and also served as chairman and president of the Northern Cricket Union in Ulster.

GOVENDER
, JUGOO, who died on September 6, aged 74, was an off-spinning all-rounder and fine slip fielder who played 42 matches now considered first-class,
mainly for Natal’s non-white side in the 1970s. He scored 74 against Eastern Province in February 1978, after taking five for 27 against Transvaal in the previous match. Govender, who became
a headmaster, was also a talented footballer.

GREGG
, DONALD MALCOLM, died on September 26, nine days after his 88th birthday. He made his debut for South Australia, aged 30, on Christmas Day 1954, having
lost his youth to war: he was 25 before he played top-grade club cricket in Adelaide. Although he lacked real speed, he was accurate, and his ability to swing the ball late both ways helped him to
three five-fors, the best of them five for nine in South Australia’s inaugural match against Tasmania, in 1956-57. He had an admirer in Bill O’Reilly, who praised him for bowling
“tenaciously” and “carrying the fight right up to the batsman”. He was a member of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service for nearly 50 years.

GREIG
, ANTHONY WILLIAM, died on December 29, aged 66. For a brief few years in the mid-1970s, Tony Greig was arguably the leading all-rounder in Test cricket
– a belligerent middle-order batsman capable of match-turning hundreds, a wicket-taking bowler (in two styles) who bristled with attacking intent, and a magnificent fielder in any position.
By 1975, he was pouring those attributes into gung-ho leadership of England. Throw in his iridescent stage-presence, and it is easy to see why he was talked of as cricket’s first
superstar.

Greig’s on-field credentials are worth re-establishing, for in the decades that followed his sensational defection to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977, they were easily
overlooked. Instead he was recast as the man who preferred the Australian dollar to the England captaincy, the rebel who led a sport towards enslavement by television, and the broadcaster who
coarsened the art of commentary. Typical was
Daily Mail
columnist Quentin Letts’s scabrous piece on him in his 2009 book
50 People Who Buggered Up Britain
. Perhaps he was
resented the more for being the harder to pin down: he was raised in South Africa, but played for England; embraced as a commentator in Australia, having been lionised as a player in India; and
loved in Sri Lanka for his unfailing endorsement of the island and their cricketers.

Greig was born in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape to a Scottish father and South African mother. His was an archetypal white middle-class South African upbringing (although his parents were
liberal in matters of race), and a young Greig barely paused for breath between games of cricket, tennis and rugby. At home he played cricket for hours with “Tackies”, the family
gardener, who had an inexhaustible appetite for bowling. The only blot on a sunny landscape was epilepsy, first revealed when he collapsed playing tennis aged 14. In the main, Greig managed to
control the illness for the rest of his life.

He attended the local Queen’s College, a favourite winter destination for Sussex cricketers, who returned to Hove with glowing reports. It was the influence of Mike Buss that secured a
trial, and Greig set off for the south coast soon after his first-class debut for Border in February 1966, aged 19. Opportunities were rationed, but he made a century in each innings for Colonel L.
C. Stevens’ XI against Cambridge University at Eastbourne, and took three West Indian wickets for A. E. R. Gilligan’s XI at Hastings. Sussex offered him a contract and, with some
reluctance, his father heeded Greig’s pleas to put cricket before a place at a South African university. Permission came with a proviso: he had four years to reach the top. It was a mission
that began spectacularly on his Championship debut, against Lancashire at Hove in May 1967. Coming to the wicket with Sussex 34 for three against an attack led by Brian Statham and Ken Higgs, he
made 156, showing scant regard for the principles of early-season batting in England. Two months later, he took eight for 25 against Gloucestershire.

He passed 1,000 runs and 50 wickets in each of his first three seasons with Sussex and, if centuries and five-fors proved elusive, his true qualities transcended statistics – an unshakable
confidence, a desire to attack in any situation, and a talent for inspiring those around him. At 6ft 7½in, and strikingly blond, he also exuded charisma. “He was just so
different,” said team-mate Peter Graves. “He had that boyish exuberance. And he was noisy.”

By 1970, Greig had completed his residency and – while his former countrymen embarked on their 22-year exile – was selected for England against the Rest of the World at Trent Bridge.
Characteristically undaunted, he took four for 59 on his first day in international cricket, then hit two of his first three balls for four. But he was less successful at Edgbaston and Headingley,
and was dropped for the final match. His next career boost came from an unlikely source. Garry Sobers was leading a Rest of the World squad to Australia in 1971-72 and, when Mike Procter withdrew,
he suggested to Don Bradman, overseeing the tour, that Greig should take his place. Arriving in Adelaide, Greig survived a mortifying moment when he palmed off his luggage on the bespectacled,
cardigan-wearing figure who greeted him. Only later did he twig: the bagman was Bradman. But it was a successful trip. Greig played in all five of the unofficial Tests and, by the time the
Australians arrived in England in 1972, the selectors gave him another chance.

Greig was a ray of light in the First Test at a gloomy Old Trafford, top-scoring twice, with 57 and 62, taking four wickets, and exciting Jack Fingleton: “Greig was an outstanding success,
proving himself England’s best all-round gain in years.” Thereafter, his performances were less eye-catching, but further mature displays came that winter in India. At Delhi, he shared
a Christmas Day stand of 101 with his captain Tony Lewis, helping England to victory; at Calcutta, he took his first Test five-wicket haul; at Bombay, he made his first century. “We sat down
for a long chat over a glass of wine at the end of the tour,” Lewis said. “One thing we had in common was that we were both always looking ahead of the game, not back on it. We both
believed in trusting your luck and obeying your gut instinct.”

So began the years of Greig’s pomp. From the trademark upturned collar, everything about him seemed designed to attract attention: at the crease, he held his bat high in defiance of the
textbook (Bradman tut-tutted), and used his tremendous reach to get on the front foot as often as possible. His cover-driving of fast bowlers was a display of power and elegance. When bowling, his
hectic approach was a mass of pumping legs and jutting elbows. In the field, he was seldom far from the action, staring batsmen down from close in, or grasping edges in the slips.

He was appointed vice-captain to Mike Denness for the tour of the West Indies in 1973-74, but in the First Test in Trinidad, his combativeness backfired. Fielding the final ball of the second
day at silly point, Greig spotted that Alvin Kallicharran, unbeaten on 142, had begun to walk off, and threw down the non-striker’s stumps. Having not yet called time, umpire Douglas Sang Hue
had no option but to uphold the appeal. The England team left the field to a fusillade of boos, and things might have turned nasty had the scoreboard operators altered the number of wickets. Even
so, the presence of angry supporters outside the ground persuaded Sobers to drive Greig back to the hotel. An evening of intense diplomatic activity ensued, ending with Kallicharran’s
reinstatement. England issued a statement apologising for Greig’s “instinctive action”, and next morning he reluctantly agreed to shake Kallicharran’s hand.

When England returned to the Queen’s Park Oval for the final Test, still trailing 1–0, Greig produced perhaps his most unlikely match-winning performance, taking eight for 86 in West
Indies’ first innings with brisk off-breaks. He had experimented with them in the Second Test in Jamaica, but purely as a defensive measure. Now, the extra bounce at Port-of-Spain made them a
viable attacking weapon, and he added five for 70 in the second innings as England squared the series. Alan Knott called it the finest off-spin bowling he had kept to, but for Derek Underwood it
paradoxically marked the end for Greig as an effective Test bowler: “At Trinidad he just hit the right rhythm and pace, but after that he never knew what to do, or what to bowl, on any
particular day or wicket.”

Another thrilling performance followed later that year, this time with the bat, at Brisbane. Arriving at 57 for four, with Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in full cry, Greig launched an
extraordinary counter-attack, driving with savage intent and cutting anything short over the heads of an astonished slip cordon. He scored 110. “It was one of the best half-dozen innings I
ever saw,” said John Woodcock. Greig’s relish for a battle was never more obvious than when he infuriated Lillee by treating bouncers with an exaggerated trembling of the knees, and
signalling his own boundaries. His colleagues were impressed by his impudence but appalled by the likely consequences: “Think of the poor bastard at the other end,” Underwood told him.
It is easy to imagine the television mogul Kerry Packer noting this bravura performance and luminous screen presence.

When England’s shell-shocked team quickly embarked on a home series with Ian Chappell’s bruisers, Denness was on borrowed time, and resigned halfway through the First Test.
Greig’s captaincy credentials had been buffed by, among others, E. W. Swanton (an improbable, but staunch, supporter), Ian Wooldridge and
Wisden
, although Greig himself felt he had
been offered the role only because there were no alternatives. Keen to add backbone to England’s fragile batting, he sought the opinion of umpires, who told him Northamptonshire’s No.
3, David Steele, was the man to stand up to Lillee and Thomson. It proved a shrewd move: in contrasting styles, Greig and Steele restored national pride on a sunlit first day at Lord’s. Greig
made 96, Steele 50 and, though the match was drawn and Australia protected their 1–0 lead for the rest of the summer, there was a seismic shift in atmosphere. “He was such a great
competitor,” said Steele.

With no England tour that winter, Greig accepted an offer to play grade cricket for Waverley in Sydney, where his on-field success became almost incidental to business contacts and promotional
deals. Back in England, he gave an interview to the BBC’s
Sportsnight
programme ahead of the 1976 West Indies series. Irked by what he saw as the journalist’s emphasis on the
qualities of the opposition, he retorted: “I’m not really sure they’re as good as everyone thinks they are.” Next came a comment destined for folklore: “If they get on
top, they are magnificent cricketers. But if they are down, they grovel, and I intend – with the help of Closey and a few others – to make them grovel.” From any previous England
captain, the remark might have been dismissed as crass psychology; from a white South African, it was just crass. The West Indians were furious. During a long, hot summer, England’s optimism
of 1975 drained away in a 3–0 defeat, although Greig responded with a typically feisty century in the Fourth Test at Headingley, before finally grovelling himself, on hands and knees, in
front of jubilant West Indian supporters at The Oval.