The First Ball After Lunch
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 152
Author: Benaud, John
Publisher: The Cricket Press Pty Ltd
Rating: 4.5 stars
As the number of books about current tours has dwindled to such an extent that it is now barely a trickle, so we have seen an increase in retrospective accounts of past tours. Back in the last century tours were major events, the duration of which were much longer than nowadays, so much so that the modern ‘tour’ often contains nothing more than a handful of international fixtures at the major centres punctuated only by trips to and from the closest airports.
Half a century ago travel by sea and rail was a thing of the past, but Australia’s tour to West Indies in 1972/73 still involved a squad of 15 having to play seven First Class fixtures and three other matches as well as five Tests, two in Trinidad and one each in Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana.
Modern writers who turn their attention to these trips therefore have much cricket to describe, and they also have the opportunity to look back through the memories of the matches that the participants have committed to print, as well as the chance to interview any survivors and, increasingly, set everything in the context of the social history of the time.
On this occasion however John Benaud, Richie’s younger brother by some 13 years, has set about his task in a slightly different way, primarily I suspect for the simple reason that he can. Benaud was one of the desperates*, and can therefore write about the tour with what amounts to absolute authority.
Benaud played three Tests for Australia, all within a six month period. The second of those Tests, against Pakistan, saw him make an important century without which his side certainly wouldn’t have won. As it was the essentially amateur nature of all Australian cricketers at that time meant he also then got the trip to the Caribbean. Had his day job not prevented Paul Sheahan from touring Benaud almost certainly wouldn’t have made the party. As events transpired the fifth Test in West Indies, the only one he made the team for, proved to be his last First Class appearance. Benaud was only 28 but made the decision to concentrate on his journalistic career.
But back in early 1973 Benaud was with an Australian side that, following their defeat at home by England in 1970/71, was on the rise under Ian Chappell’s captaincy. The next Ashes series in 1972 had been drawn 2-2 and Pakistan beaten 3-0 just a few weeks before the trip to the Caribbean. West Indies on the other hand were struggling. They had been beaten in Australia in 1968/69, in England in 1969 and at home by India in 1970/71.
So the West Indies side was not in a great place, its problems exacerbated by virtue of missing its talisman, Garry Sobers, for what turned out to be the entire series. In addition this was, remarkably given what was just around the corner, a West Indies side that did not have a strong pace attack, so much so that for two of the five Test they selected just a single pace bowler, and Clive Lloyd and his modest medium pace opened the bowling with Keith Boyce.
The format of the book is slightly unusual in that, in the first instance at least, the tour is over and done with by the end of page 46. The first two Tests, both drawn, are dealt with in just a few pages. By far the majority of this section concerns the events of the third Test and the decisive moment that gives the book its title, the first ball after lunch on the fifth day. West Indies were then 268/4, 66 runs short of victory with Alvin Kallicharran on 91 and Maurice Foster on 30. But the restart saw a Max Walker delivery do for Kalli, and the West Indian tail failed to wag.
The visitors won the fourth Test as well, and that gets a few pages before the final Test, ‘the dead Test’, drawn like the first and second, attracts just a few short paragraphs. Some of the other matches get a mention as well but, as I say, a third of the way into the book and the tour is over.
The next section of the book, about another third of it, looks back at some of the episodes from the cricket and provides the sort of insights that only one of the desperates themselves would be able to provide.
To give a few examples of what I mean I particularly enjoyed a story involving Chappell and Doug Walters. As we all know Chappell was the sort of skipper who managed the difficult task of remaining very much ‘one of the lads’ whilst at the same time unquestionably being ‘the boss’. On one occasion Walters, who had been out socialising, managed to arrive at a ground after play had begun. Chappell condemned him to what Benaud refers to as the fine leg waltz, fielding at that distant position at both ends, for an entire session. One outcome seems to have been that, unsurprisingly, Walters’ timekeeping improved.
Other passages that particularly struck me are the analysis of the bowling of the West Indian left arm wrist spinner Inshan Ali, and how a relatively innocuous sledge from Greg Chappell contributed to a crucial dismissal of home skipper Rohan Kanhai.
The short clipped paragraphs with never so much as a single word wasted make this is as enjoyable an account of a cricket tour as any I have read, but the book is rather more than that, as the final third of it moves on to a wider context.
Back in the early 1970s resentment amongst Australian cricketers at the paucity of the rewards offered to them, particularly in light of the ever increasing workload expected of them, was growing. Sheahan and Ashley Mallett could not afford to tour in 1972/73 and, as noted, Benaud himself retired at the end of the tour and he was not alone in that.
Unsurprisingly it is the players’ perspective that Benaud sets out and, given the rewards that the world’s finest attract today, it is remarkable just how much things have changed. Without Kerry Packer and those desperates who could afford to hang in there for another three years just where the game would be is an interesting thought, although perhaps things have gone just a little too far the other way?
This one is a remarkable book and is highly recommended. Do not however think that the interest is over once you get to the statistical appendix. After that and just before the index there is tuckes away something every bit as good as Benaud’s narrative, an afterword from publisher Ronald Cardwell.
Copies of The First Ball After Lunch are now available from Roger Page and, in the not too distant future there will be a luxury limited edition signed by each of the surviving desperates. It won’t be cheap, but given that the standard edition is a beautifully produced book it will be a very special volume indeed and will, again, be available from Mr Page.
*the name Benaud uses to describe himself and his teammates.
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