Malcolm Knox on why the WSC stats should count.

SportCricketODI
OPINION
Rebels without applause: It’s time to recognise World Series records
Malcolm Knox
Malcolm Knox
Journalist, author and columnist
November 18, 2022 — 11.50am


It’s unfair to describe the current Australia-England one-day cricket series as meaningless. It has meaning for the participants and for those watching, few though they may be. Baffling perhaps, poorly scheduled, but meaningless? Whatever its meaning is, it is made concrete in international cricket records. There will be no asterisk next to Dawid Malan’s very fine century in Adelaide on Thursday to say ‘Not sure why they were playing or what it meant’. An international hundred is an international hundred.

Exactly 45 years ago, some of the most meaningful international cricket was played, and yet it is still being ghosted by the International Cricket Council.



Consider what World Series Cricket started and what it left behind. Cricket played under lights in coloured clothing with a white ball – the sport’s most influential innovation since 1877. Drop-in pitches. Field restrictions to enhance limited-overs cricket. Life-saving helmets. Cameras down the pitch from both ends. Stump microphones. The packaging of the game to provide careers for players who would otherwise have been lost.

There is not enough room here to summarise the Packer revolution. Its legacy is now incorporated into formats, including Test cricket, that have their status reverentially protected and curated by the International Cricket Council.

All of its legacy is acknowledged, except what the players did.

WSC might have seemed meaningless in the early summer of 1977, thanks to loyalty to ‘establishment cricket’ and the initial weirdness of the WSC presentation. If you saw the first ‘Supertest’ (the word ‘Test’ was protected by ICC copyright), you weren’t quite sure what you were watching. Some of the players seemed to be wearing WSC merch. You could hear the players’ bats tap the crease and hit the ball, you could hear their boots scrape the turf as they bowled, and you could hear them swear at each other.

Ian Chappell drives the ball from Asif Iqbal at VFL Park.
Ian Chappell drives the ball from Asif Iqbal at VFL Park.CREDIT:THE AGE ARCHIVES

Occasionally, you also heard them swear at an interviewer as they came off. You got disoriented because the game appeared to be played from just one end, until you realised that you weren’t watching half the game from behind the wicketkeeper’s back anymore because – amazingly – cricket telecasting now had cameras at each end. It was very quiet: there was practically nobody in VFL Park. At first. But soon, because of the players and the games, spectators came and things got very noisy.

What earned WSC its credibility and audience was the exploits of the best cricketers seen before or since. All-time greats like the Chappells, Dennis Lillee, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Imran Khan and Barry Richards said it was the toughest, most competitive, most serious cricket they ever played. The West Indies’ rise from ‘Calypso cricketers’ to an unmatched world force took place during World Series. Over two seasons in Australia and one in the West Indies, a short tour of New Zealand and a long one of grateful Australian country centres, some astonishing games and achievements took place.


The spine still tingles at footage of Wayne Daniel clubbing Mick Malone for six off the last ball to win one of the first-ever night matches.

That, and the inaugural Sydney Cricket Ground day-night match in front of a crowd that literally could not be counted because the gates were thrown open, marked the birth of cricket under lights.

Wayne Daniels sends Mick Malone for a zac off the last ball

Individually, Greg Chappell would be unquestionably rated Australia’s second-best batter after Don Bradman if his 1415 Supertest runs were added to his 7110 official runs. Imagine averaging more than 50 against the quickest pace attack on some rough and ready but always spicy pitches. The standing of Lillee, both of the Richards, Lloyd, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and many others would be burnished if their statistics were incorporated into their official Test numbers.

But those are, as Ian Chappell and others said when Cricket Australia decided to ‘recognise’ them in a separate category in 2015, just numbers. For the greats, the stats just make them greater.

Consider some of the others. Australia’s Rob Langer and Wayne Prior, the West Indies’ Jim Allen and South Africa’s Clive Rice and Garth Le Roux are not officially ‘Test’ cricketers, yet they played Supertests of higher calibre than most Test cricket seen in their lifetimes. Many others whose official international records are fleeting would be dignified with the substance they deserve if their WSC records were recognised. Bruce Laird, as one example among many, scored three Supertest hundreds against Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Michael Holding and Colin Croft. Laird never made a century in his 21 official Test matches. After 45 years, it’s time.


There have been periodic pushes to get WSC recognised, and the arguments against it get weaker over time. It used to be maintained that as the laws of cricket, also under ICC copyright, did not apply to WSC, they weren’t ‘real’ Test matches. Baloney. All sorts of rogue variations – three-day Tests, timeless Tests, private tours, exhibitions – are incorporated into official records going back to 1877. There is nothing fixed and sanctified about ‘Test cricket’ that can bar Supertests from official status. The fact that some Supertests were played by a World XI does not rule them out either, as the ICC recognises other World XI fixtures. Several dozen WSC one-day internationals also deserve official recognition.

The only conceivable reason for the ICC’s ongoing inaction is that the two countries that were significantly under-represented in WSC, England and India, now the most powerful in the game, have no stake in it. If cricket were steered instead by Australia, the West Indies and Pakistan, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

When it can be hard to find the meaning in some of today’s fixtures, why is it important to give it to those that took place 45 years ago? It is a sad matter to state why this should be a frontline issue. The youngest WSC players are now close to seventy, and the oldest – West Indian Lance Gibbs – is 88. Fellow West Indian David Holford passed away this year at 82. The cricket world lost Rod Marsh, Ashley Mallett, Gary Gilmour, David Hookes, Tony Greig and Bob Woolmer before their WSC contributions were given their due.

Which games though? Just the Supertests between the test-playing countries? Games Involving a Test playing nation against the World XI? All the ODIs, of varying lengths, or just a selection?

I think the Supertests - yes, but only after the two World XI tours of 70-72 are included. Give Alan Jones his cap back. Massie’s Lords match was not his debut. Gary Sobers 254 gets the recognition it deserves. McKenzie goes past Benaud. Woodcock gets a second Test. Eddie Barlow and the Pollocks add to their records.

I’m not sure about the WSC OD games though. There were so many. Yagmich a rep player?

Still, there were so many regular JAMODIs at the peak, before T20 took over… not old enough to remember these but surely the volume of matches didn’t exceed that?

Do the WSC games have FC/List A status?

lardbucket wrote:

Yagmich a rep player?

Was the Yak that much worse than Anthony Stuart or Brad Young or Glenn Bishop?

Meanwhile, are you still prepared to push Garth past 250 wickets (and everybody's fave beer buddy Duncan past 0), on realising part of the colat is nearly doubling the number of Tests played by a certain Dubber with a very traditionally Australian first name?

Yep, it further emphasises the fat useless Dubber’s uselessness and unworthiness. Worst Australian Test player of all time.

And I note that you did not mention Glenn Trimble!

lardbucket wrote:And I note that you did not mention Glenn Trimble!

Failing memory - either that or the memory successfully editing out the truly nightmare-inducingly horrific....

I always had too much respect for Glenn's old man to find satisfaction in potting him

Interesting that Knox did not allude to the fact that some of these recent cricketers have had their stats massaged by tests against the Bangers when they were truly shite and now the likes of Ireland have test status. Imagine comparing these games with the ones cited by Knox.

Red wrote:Interesting that Knox did not allude to the fact that some of these recent cricketers have had their stats massaged by tests against the Bangers when they were truly shite and now the likes of Ireland have test status. Imagine comparing these games with the ones cited by Knox.

Maybe that was because he was on a word limit and he didn't want to waste 40 precious words putting forward a crap argument that added nothing of value to the discussion. There have always been rubbish teams. Shit I can even remember when Australia was one of them!

For 7-8 years leading up to Ashes 1989!

The 80s was a strong era, perhaps the only time the Ashes has been pretty much a wooden spoon contest (with the possible exclusion of then-newbies Sri Lanka). WI were untouchable and India, Pakistan and New Zealand all more than half decent. And had South Africa been allowed to compete, they’d have been a handy side as well!

lardbucket wrote:For 7-8 years leading up to Ashes 1989!

We won a gilly in that era ....

And won back the Ashes with a depleted team.
We may have been mediocre for much on the mid 80s but we were only absolutely bloody awful for about two and a half years, late 84 to 87. The Windies never blackwashed Australia, and right now a 0-0 draw (one tie after making all the running) in India would be called a good effort. Home and away losses to England and New Zealand, all in 18 months up to Jan 87, were completely beyond the pale and that was when we hit the bottom of the barrel.

Fred Nerk wrote:

Red wrote:Interesting that Knox did not allude to the fact that some of these recent cricketers have had their stats massaged by tests against the Bangers when they were truly shite and now the likes of Ireland have test status. Imagine comparing these games with the ones cited by Knox.

Maybe that was because he was on a word limit and he didn't want to waste 40 precious words putting forward a crap argument that added nothing of value to the discussion. There have always been rubbish teams. Shit I can even remember when Australia was one of them!

True, but did those Packer players he was referencing really get to play against teams as shite as the Bangers or SL in their early years? Some of them even encountered SA in 1970 when they had one of their greatest ever teams according to the scribes.

Diluting records played against allegedly shite Test sides is perilous.

You can go back to when SAf first started playing Tests, English and Aus players filled their boots, especially the bowlers.

India were smashed for a couple of decades before becoming competitive, similarly Sri Lanka. It took Chuck to arrive for the latter to start improving.

Pakistan were reasonably competitive from the start, but it took NZ until their 45th Test to get their first win.

The Windies have descended to a rubbish side.

So you can't pick and chose which teams you shouldn't count statistics against.

Yeah, there’s always been minnows of some description or other. We can call players out for minnow-bashing and “Zimflation” of their stats against poor sides (and highlight Chuck’s 176 wickets against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe for example) but objectively a run is a run, a wicket is a wicket, whether it’s against India or Ireland. Beyond that definition everything else is subjective.

Yup.

In some ways there can be more pressure v the minnows. I vividly remember Aus being in deep shit in T1 v Bangers in 2006. They made 400+ batting first then we were in all sorts of trouble at 6 for about 100, before a Gilly masterpiece (140-odd) helped squeeze us up to around 270.

We then rolled the Bangers for 150-ish and got the 300 required 7 down (with Punter making a quality ton).

The 2nd Test in that series featured Dizzy's famous 201*.

Ireland bowled us out for 85 in the pre-Ashes Test of 2019… we rolled them for 38 to win it, but they were only chasing what seemed a gettable 182.

Hayden"s 380 v Zim produced the ultimate in 'minnow-bashing' bleating from the thick end of the wedge. 'Anybody could have done that!', they pontificated, Ignoring about 120 years of obvious statistical reality. I remember VoR being particularly outraged and territorially violated by the fact that it happened in Perth of alll places!

skully wrote:Yup.

In some ways there can be more pressure v the minnows. I vividly remember Aus being in deep shit in T1 v Bangers in 2006. They made 400+ batting first then we were in all sorts of trouble at 6 for about 100, before a Gilly masterpiece (140-odd) helped squeeze us up to around 270.

We then rolled the Bangers for 150-ish and got the 300 required 7 down (with Punter making a quality ton).

The 2nd Test in that series featured Dizzy's famous 201*.

A lot of Facebook warrior Indians decry The Don’s average as ‘all the runs were made against England and other minnows’ with no Don on India action.

His average would've been over 100 if he had've played the Bannies more.

Fred Nerk wrote:Hayden"s 380 v Zim produced the ultimate in 'minnow-bashing' bleating from the thick end of the wedge. 'Anybody could have done that!', they pontificated, Ignoring about 120 years of obvious statistical reality. I remember VoR being particularly outraged and territorially violated by the fact that it happened in Perth of alll places!

At least we let Lara have his record back within a couple of years

beamer wrote:Still, there were so many regular JAMODIs at the peak, before T20 took over… not old enough to remember these but surely the volume of matches didn’t exceed that?

Do the WSC games have FC/List A status?

No they don't. That should be the first (and for me only) step. I'm happy that WSC doesn't count as official Tests (obviously that doesn't stop performances in them being taken into account when judging the worth of a player). But it is beyond absurd that they currently have the statistical relevance of our backyard games on Christmas Day. It would be very easy to give the Supersets FC status.