Until the match-fixing scandal of the recent past, no cricketer has lost reputation so fast or so conclusively as Tony Greig, who secretly helped Kerry Packer set up World Series Cricket in 1977. Yet although it was inevitable that his participation in WSC should lead to Greig upping sticks from Sussex to Australia later that year, it was much regretted both on a personal and national level. Greig, South-African born but England captain, was not only charming, articulate and handsome, but a charismatic figure and a notably adaptable allrounder with both bat and ball. His two most celebrated innings, an attacking 110 on a Brisbane flyer against Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in 1974-75, and a 430-minute 103 against Bedi, Chandresekhar and Prasanna on a broken pitch at Calcutta two years later, had almost nothing in common but their author. As a bowler he took most of his 141 Test wickets with fast-medium outswing, helped by extra bounce from his 6ft 7ins frame. In an effort to exploit the presence of five dangerous left-handers in the 1973-74 West Indies team, however, Greig had enough confidence in himself to experiment with offspin. He got the feel of it at Bridgetown, where he took 6 for 164 in a total of 596 for 8 (Lawrence Rowe 302). Even more improbably, at Port-of-Spain a fortnight later, while Derek Underwood and Pat Pocock were sharing 4 for 222, Greig grabbed 8 for 86 and 5 for 70 to bowl England to a 26-run victory to square the series. At second slip, where he took most of his 87 Test catches, there was nothing to choose between Greig and Botham, his successor as England's allrounder.
John Thicknesse