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| February 2, 2003 | Sunday | Ziqa’ad 29, 1423 |
First World Cup changed one-dayers
LONDON, Feb 1: Frost, rain and even snow lingered into June during the frigid English spring of 1975. The portents could hardly have been less auspicious for the first cricket World Cup.
This, though, was to be no ordinary summer and cricket was never to be the same after the first global gathering of a game born and nurtured in the English countryside.
A hot sun blazed throughout a tournament graced by some of the best players in history, culminating in a classic final under a flawless sky at Lord’s on the longest day of the year.
More than two decades later, Clive Lloyd, captain of the triumphant West Indies side reflected: “It was cricket’s first authentic make-over, that in effect tickled the fancy of the free spirit and prodded the passionless purists into the 20th century.”
Lloyd played what remains the definitive World Cup one-day innings in the final against Australia. Tall, stooped and nonchalantly twiddling a bat as heavy as a small tree, he struck 102, taming the controlled fire and fury of Australian fast bowlers Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. His innings drew a radio commentary to match the occasion from the peerless John Arlott.
“Lloyd hits him high away over mid-wicket for four. The stroke of a man knocking a thistle top off with a walking stick,” Arlott intoned.
One-day cricket at the highest level still dismays the purists, who decry what they perceive as a loss of subtlety and grace from the game.
In fact, the limited overs version is more faithful to the original form than the three, four or five-day formats.
Cricket matches on the village green or on grounds attached to the great country houses, romanticised in both forms by generations of writers, could be completed in a day thanks to the lingering English twilights.
Was one-day cricket always the way to go? Four committees were set up between 1937 and 1961 to look into the state of the county game in England as attendances dwindled inexorably, exacerbated by the arrival of television and the growing popularity of the motor car.
In 1954, The Cricketer, hardly an anti-establishment magazine, was moved to comment “cricket has become a sullen, unhappy business and not a successful business either”.
Nine years later, after yet another report, the English authorities introduced the Gillette Cup, a one-day knockout tournament and a Sunday league, televised live, was to follow in 1969.
The league followed the success of the International Cavaliers, featuring Gary Sobers, Fred Trueman and the Pollock brothers Graeme and Peter, who played one-day matches with limited overs and restricted bowlers’ run-ups.
The first One-day International was the result of accident, not planning. A one-day match was hastily staged at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when the third Test of the 1970-1 series between Australia and England was rained off.
To the surprise of the administrators, 46,000 people, roughly half the capacity of the giant ground, turned up to watch Australia win, a brief respite during a generally unhappy summer for the home side.
From that point England, along with New Zealand who were eager in those days to arrange any international cricket, regularly played One-day Internationals up to the 1975 Cup.
It took, though, the hothouse environment of Kerry Packer’s World Series cricket in 1978-79, to change one-day cricket into a form still recognisable today.—Reuters
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