Greg Chappell - just how good do people think he was?

[Swervy]

No, far, far more bad came of the split than good.

About the only good thing that came of it was improved wage-packets.

.

sorry, what was so bad that came due to the Packer incident.

Surely the knock on effects of the improved wage packet have to be considered a positive.

 

[Swervy]

.

 

[Richard]

sorry, what was so bad that came due to the Packer incident.

The OTT commercialisation resulting in too many ODIs, the fact that the proper international cricket was made a joke for near on 3 years (the fact that 1978\79 is still considered an Ashes series is ludicrous, and it's not by any stretch the only series), the fact that Nine's victory over ABC meant domestic cricket in Australia was marginalised even further than it's historic place (which wasn't exactly high), the fact that Tony Greig - a fundamentally decent man - lost reputation faster than probably any sportsman in British history, and worst of all the fact that the precedent was set for SA Rebel tours.

Look, I'm not saying Nine covering cricket is a bad thing, they've introduced many excellent ideas (though I can't quite shake the feeling that dual-end coverage and extra mics in places like stumps might just possibly have happened anyway) but the game would be immesurably better off had Packer Cricket never happened.

Surely the knock on effects of the improved wage packet have to be considered a positive.

They do, it's just they were the only one.

 

[Richard]

.

That really has to rank above even

h

 

[Swervy]

The OTT commercialisation resulting in too many ODIs, the fact that the proper international cricket was made a joke for near on 3 years (the fact that 1978\79 is still considered an Ashes series is ludicrous, and it's not by any stretch the only series), the fact that Nine's victory over ABC meant domestic cricket in Australia was marginalised even further than it's historic place (which wasn't exactly high), the fact that Tony Greig - a fundamentally decent man - lost reputation faster than probably any sportsman in British history, and worst of all the fact that the precedent was set for SA Rebel tours.

Re:What you call the OTT commercialisation resulting in too many ODI :

What is happened is the game is providing for the masses, you might not like it, I might not really like it, but its what keeps the game afloat worldwide (financially that is). We live in a time where, as consumers (and I am talking generally here), we demand our sportsmen and women to be competing at as high a standard as possible. Its what inspires the youngster to take up sports. Now if amount of ODI cricket hadnt risen (assuming professionalism would have automatically kicked in without the kick in the arse WSC provided), where infact would the money come to pay these athletes!!!!

The 'OTT commercialistion' of the game isnt due to Packer, its due to changing demands from the public, its simple as. What Packer did do is give the international players a good deal for the work they put in, so that they didnt have to miss tours due to 'business commitments' (although actually I think G Chappell did miss the 81 Ashes for that very reason), and they could dedicate their time to the game, as it is US, the public that want to see our cricketing heroes play to fullest capacity.

If it hadnt happened then,who knows when it would have happened, and really, cricket might just have been a dead sport now, because it didnt adapt quickly. As it is, the game is big bucks (obviously not in the football sense), which encourages more people to be drawn towards the game (because, yes, we all want to make a living)

What you dont seem to get Richard is that sometimes, revolution is better than evolution, things sometimes need the kick in the butt to start something fresh. Cricket needed it. What ever the motives, I think Packer spotted an opportunity (lets remember Packer wasnt the only one involved) and the game started to become marketable again (for the first time since Compton probably).

Domestic Cricket marginalised in Australia: Well I remember watching McDonalds Cup stuff post WSC, and plenty of it!! It might well be different now, but so is the world in general, you need to deal with it Dicky boy.

Re: Tony Greig..wow, well he is making a good enough living now, I dont think his rep is too badly done to, and to those who do hold a grudge, I know what I would be saying to them.....'*#£^ off, I dont give a stuff').

SA Rebel tours: Who is to say they wouldnt have happened anyway, there was a demand for top flight cricketer in South Africa, the money was there, cant blame Packer for that.

Look, I'm not saying Nine covering cricket is a bad thing, they've introduced many excellent ideas (though I can't quite shake the feeling that dual-end coverage and extra mics in places like stumps might just possibly have happened anyway) but the game would be immesurably better off had Packer Cricket never happened.

You still really havent come up with any ways why the game would be so much better now without WSC.

They do, it's just they were the only one.

what?

 

[Swervy]

That really has to rank above even

it was the only way I could get the previous post to show for some reason

 

[social]

What does it matter what generation he was? All I said was you mentioned worse bowlers than him and failed to mention him.

And Benjamin was far better - what's your point?

Err, Franklyn Stephenson, a better bowler, played 0 Tests due to a similar ban. Croft, too, caused his own downfall by electing to go to South Africa. Their lack of Tests was their own fault.

Thanks Richard, you keep enforcing my point by nominating bowlers that would walk into other test teams.

As for Croft, you're wrong.

After playing 27 tests and taking 125 wickets @ 23, he succumbed to a back injury on the tour of Australia in 1981.

He was aged just 28 and basically forced to retire from the game.

The SA trip in about '84 was like a retirement benefit - he did nothing and got a heap of dough for it.

He is one of the greatest fast bowlers ever.

 

[social]

No, far, far more bad came of the split than good.

About the only good thing that came of it was improved wage-packets.

It wasn't the remotest consideration, anyone who knows anything about these type of moghuls knows they care little about anything other than themselves.

Richard, name one bad thing that came out of the Packer years.

Players were suddenly paid what they were worth - the '75 tourists to Eng for the Ashes and the World Cup were paid the equivalent of the minimum weekly wage (that's right, Dennis Lillee and others were being paid the sames as a 16 year old street sweeper)

TV coverage improved exponentially and rights became a tradeable commodity for the first time thereby delivering billions into the games' coffers over the years

Player development was given adequate funding (part of Packer's settlement with the ACB)

One-day matches (particularly day nighters) were suddenly thrust into the limelight and would become the greatest money-spinners the game has ever seen

etc, etc, etc

So a few useless old farts got their noses out of joint and some players got test caps that didnt deserve them

History shows that the game desperately needed it to happen and Packer is rightly lauded by virtually everyone in the cricket community for having the balls and foresight to pull it off.

 

[archie mac]

Thanks Richard, you keep enforcing my point by nominating bowlers that would walk into other test teams.

As for Croft, you're wrong.

After playing 27 tests and taking 125 wickets @ 23, he succumbed to a back injury on the tour of Australia in 1981.

He was aged just 28 and basically forced to retire from the game.

The SA trip in about '84 was like a retirement benefit - he did nothing and got a heap of dough for it.

He is one of the greatest fast bowlers ever.

I don't know about one of the greatest, but he was certainly one of the meanest

 

[archie mac]

No, far, far more bad came of the split than good.

About the only good thing that came of it was improved wage-packets.

It wasn't the remotest consideration, anyone who knows anything about these type of moghuls knows they care little about anything other than themselves.

Even Henry Blofeld one of the strongest of the anti Packer group, has sinced agreed that Packer was good for the game

 

[social]

I don't know about one of the greatest, but he was certainly one of the meanest

Until his injury, he was an integral part of the greatest pace battery the world has ever seen - as has been pointed out, you simply didnt get a game unless you were of the very highest quality.

 

[Richard]

Thanks Richard, you keep enforcing my point by nominating bowlers that would walk into other test teams.

As for Croft, you're wrong.

After playing 27 tests and taking 125 wickets @ 23, he succumbed to a back injury on the tour of Australia in 1981.

He was aged just 28 and basically forced to retire from the game.

The SA trip in about '84 was like a retirement benefit - he did nothing and got a heap of dough for it.

He is one of the greatest fast bowlers ever.

Colin Croft one of the greatest seamers ever, now I've heard it all!

Croft was nasty, that's about it. He had the most God-awful action you'll ever see and had he not played so little would very likely have tailed-off. And there's no excuse - none whatsoever - for going to South Africa.

 

[Richard]

Richard, name one bad thing that came out of the Packer years.

I already have, loads of them.

Players were suddenly paid what they were worth - the '75 tourists to Eng for the Ashes and the World Cup were paid the equivalent of the minimum weekly wage (that's right, Dennis Lillee and others were being paid the sames as a 16 year old street sweeper)

Who's to say "what they were worth". They were paid more, and being paid less in the past didn't seem to do the many oustanding cricketers of the 1930s, 50s, 60s and early 70s any harm.

TV coverage improved exponentially and rights became a tradeable commodity for the first time thereby delivering billions into the games' coffers over the years

Which just kind of might have happened anyway... see any number of articles on the game's relationship with TV. Packer deserves no credit for it.

Player development was given adequate funding (part of Packer's settlement with the ACB)

Because it was doing so terribly before?

One-day matches (particularly day nighters) were suddenly thrust into the limelight and would become the greatest money-spinners the game has ever seen

Erm, there's always some money-spinner waiting round the corner, you know. If it was ODIs, it was ODIs, and it didn't need that schism to make it.

So a few useless old farts got their noses out of joint and some players got test caps that didnt deserve them

Those "useless old farts" were doing a pretty good job of keeping the game in good health in case you missed it.

History shows that the game desperately needed it to happen and Packer is rightly lauded by virtually everyone in the cricket community for having the balls and foresight to pull it off.

No, it didn't need it. You're a crackpot if you think that was what Packer had in mind. He didn't. All he wanted was cricket on Nine.

 

[Richard]

Even Henry Blofeld one of the strongest of the anti Packer group, has sinced agreed that Packer was good for the game

The game of cricket would be better if Kerry Packer had never been born. He was a self-centred media moghul, who couldn't have cared less about the game. He was not concerned with improving it, merely getting cricket on his Nine network.

 

[Richard]

Re:What you call the OTT commercialisation resulting in too many ODI :

What is happened is the game is providing for the masses, you might not like it, I might not really like it, but its what keeps the game afloat worldwide (financially that is). We live in a time where, as consumers (and I am talking generally here), we demand our sportsmen and women to be competing at as high a standard as possible. Its what inspires the youngster to take up sports. Now if amount of ODI cricket hadnt risen (assuming professionalism would have automatically kicked in without the kick in the arse WSC provided), where infact would the money come to pay these athletes!!!!

The 'OTT commercialistion' of the game isnt due to Packer, its due to changing demands from the public, its simple as. What Packer did do is give the international players a good deal for the work they put in, so that they didnt have to miss tours due to 'business commitments' (although actually I think G Chappell did miss the 81 Ashes for that very reason), and they could dedicate their time to the game, as it is US, the public that want to see our cricketing heroes play to fullest capacity.

Packer might not be the only one responsible, but he was the one that started the ball rolling in that respect. Had he not, things might be in a slightly better state than they are today. I've no problem with the game involving big-ish bucks, but the current situation is ridiculous with the amount of cricket being played and had things happened more gradually such a thing might never be upon us.

If it hadnt happened then,who knows when it would have happened, and really, cricket might just have been a dead sport now, because it didnt adapt quickly. As it is, the game is big bucks (obviously not in the football sense), which encourages more people to be drawn towards the game (because, yes, we all want to make a living)

Sports don't just die. Cricket had already survived for 100-odd years as a professional sport. There was nothing wrong in 1976 and to suggest that it'd just die sometime soon makes precisely no sense whatsoever.

What you dont seem to get Richard is that sometimes, revolution is better than evolution, things sometimes need the kick in the butt to start something fresh. Cricket needed it. What ever the motives, I think Packer spotted an opportunity (lets remember Packer wasnt the only one involved) and the game started to become marketable again (for the first time since Compton probably).

That's complete crap, the game has always been marketable and has always been marketed, Test attendances have never been poor and certainly weren't in 1976, even now when they're lower than ever in most places they're still not problematic.

Packer spotted nothing, all he cared about, as I've said 1,000,000 times, was getting cricket on Nine, not changing anything about the game. As I say - Nine has been good for the game in some ways, but overall things would have been a damn sight better had the ACB just accepted Packer's original offer in 1975 and put proper, Test, cricket straight on Nine with no World Series Cricket mentioned. Revolution is rarely if ever better than evolution, and in cricket that's more true than ever.

Domestic Cricket marginalised in Australia: Well I remember watching McDonalds Cup stuff post WSC, and plenty of it!! It might well be different now, but so is the world in general, you need to deal with it Dicky boy.

"Deal" with what? I don't even remember the World of 1979, hardly a "deal" needing to be done.

Re: Tony Greig..wow, well he is making a good enough living now, I dont think his rep is too badly done to, and to those who do hold a grudge, I know what I would be saying to them.....'*#£^ off, I dont give a stuff'.

Yet he'd be positively revered in England but for Packer intervention - as he was before it. He might not care now, but had the WSC plans crashed and burned (a very, very possible outcome but for Nifty Nev) he might well have been left with precisely nout.

SA Rebel tours: Who is to say they wouldnt have happened anyway, there was a demand for top flight cricketer in South Africa, the money was there, cant blame Packer for that.

Can, and do, and so does Gideon Haigh and a whole raft of others. The two were patently connected, even Ali Bacher said he copied the idea from Packer.

You still really havent come up with any ways why the game would be so much better now without WSC.

I have - no Rebel tours, no tainted 3-year period in international cricket history,

 

[archie mac]

The game of cricket would be better if Kerry Packer had never been born. He was a self-centred media moghul, who couldn't have cared less about the game. He was not concerned with improving it, merely getting cricket on his Nine network.

I basically agree with you, but still was a good thing for cricket

 

[archie mac]

Until his injury, he was an integral part of the greatest pace battery the world has ever seen - as has been pointed out, you simply didnt get a game unless you were of the very highest quality.

The Windies often had three great fast bowlers and one very good fast bowler, I always rated Croft as the very good fast bowler

 

[Richard]

I basically agree with you, but still was a good thing for cricket

What, Kerry Packer?

The common picture painted is that Packer intended to improve the game of cricket when the reality is that his sole care was to get cricket on his network.

I take issue only with the notion that he cared.

Good came out of Nine covering the game, undoubtedly. But Kerry Packer did not have the good of the game at heart, at all.

 

[social]

What, Kerry Packer?

The common picture painted is that Packer intended to improve the game of cricket when the reality is that his sole care was to get cricket on his network.

I take issue only with the notion that he cared.

Good came out of Nine covering the game, undoubtedly. But Kerry Packer did not have the good of the game at heart, at all.

So Bradman and others had the good of the game at heart?

What utter crap!

In case you've missed it, the players are an integral part of the "game" and they had been treated shamefully for years.

WSC got off the ground because Tony Greig and Ian Chappell were unsuccessful in their attempts to secure wage rises for their players. As a result, without Packer, a number of players were being forced into retirement.

People like Bradman and the powers that be at Lords lived by the adage that "if it was good enough for us, then it's good enough for them."

Fortunately for us, Packer dragged the game into the 20th century and the world passed those incompetent, arrogant pricks by.

 

[Richard]

No, Packer got the cricket he wanted.

To drag the game into the 20th-century, he'd have had to want to do that. And he didn't.