Bob Holland: The Man Who Revived Leg Spin in Australia

I had already taught myself and was already bowling leg spin in junior cricket before the 1984/85 season, when the West Indies wiped Australia out in a succession of Test matches. But the selection of Bob Holland in the Test team and his subsequent success was the real catalyst to me casting aside all other forms of bowling and concentrating on the one art that I came to love.

He wasn’t selected for Australia until he was 38 years old, and although his figures in his first two Tests were not exacting he had moments where he caused the Windies batsmen some confusion. The fifth Test of that series was one of those moments you don’t forget if you grew up in that period, when Australia was at its lowest ebb. 3-0 down, and lucky to draw the 4th Test, Australia gambled on Holland and Murray Bennett. Kepler Wessels scored 173 as Australia ground out 9/471 over two days. Then came the web. Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Marshall, Dujon. Six consecutive wickets between 2/72 and 8/160. Each batsman defeated by a mixture of spin, flight and guile. Even watching the highlights of that match today, watching Dutchy spinning that ball out of his hands, watching the dip and turn as it approaches the batsmen, it still brings back those feelings of euphoria I had on those joyous days at the end of December 1984 and the first days of 1985, as we finally beat the West Indies in a Test match. You can see the confusion in the batsmen, that they just wanted to hit him out of the attack, but time and again he beat them. 6/54 off 22 overs he finished with, and Allan Border gleefully enforced the follow on. In the second innings the Windies played him much more cautiously, and it was McDermott, Lawson and Bennett who made the inroads, but the leg spinner is supposed to get the tail, and Dutchy did that, finishing with 4/90, and a ten wicket match. The legspinner, the topspinner, the wrong ‘un and the flipper. Dutchy had them all, but it was his accuracy and his dip on the ball that caught my eye and had me in the backyard trying to reproduce it.

He went to England in 1985 where the home team ensured their seaming wickets gave him nothing, except the dryness of Lords, where he helped bowl Australia to its only victory on the tour with 5/68 in the second innings. He also took ten wickets the following season against New Zealand back at the SCG. They were his great moments in the baggy green, and perhaps only age and the huge increase in his workload began to negate his ability to take wickets, and he was eventually passed over to the next generation.

Bob Holland’s passing last night at the age of 70 to an aggressive brain cancer has taken one Newcastle’s most important and professional cricket coaches and passer-on of cricketing knowledge. At a time when the leg spin craft had been almost eradicated from Australian cricket in the pursuit of a fast bowling cartel to rival the West Indies, the art of leg spin was left behind. Through the intervention of the selection panel, led by Lawrie Sawle, Greg Chappell and Rick McCosker, Bob Holland was given the chance to play for Australia, and not only did he win games almost by his own hand on three occasions in that time, he brought back the magnificent art of leg spin bowling to Australia’s youth, and showed how wonderful and effective it could be. I’ve spent the last 35 years trying to understand it all, and now my nine year old son is carrying on that tradition.

Thanks for everything Dutchy. That Sydney Test will keep your memory alive forever.

Is Chris Lynn Money Hungry or Money Magnanimous?

There has been a bit of a hoo-haa over Chris Lynn’s decision to forfeit a contract with Queensland cricket for the 2017-18 season. In essence, some reporting circles have suggested it is the first move into the future of cricket, where able bodied young cricketers decide to renounce contracts with state or national teams in order to ply their trade unhindered in the various lucrative T20 leagues that are popping up all over the world. While it has been seen in recent times that international cricketers have retired, but continue to do exactly this, these players are generally in the mid-thirties, and are looking to make a few extra bucks in their twilight years in order to boost their superannuation. Brad Hodge has done this, and so too Brad Hogg. Shane Watson seems to be unable to break down like he used to and is playing all over the world. Brendan McCullum has taken this path as well, and no doubt Luke Ronchi is about to join them. But the fact that Lynn, aged 27, has done this seems to have outraged the pundits, and made some nay-sayers sceptical of the future of long form and Test cricket.

Well. What a load of rubbish. It heralds no such thing.

I have no facts or information as to the reasons behind Lynn’s decision. It could well be that it is exactly as the decriers of doom have said. But let’s look at this just a little more logically, and see if we can sort it out.
Chris Lynn is currently injured – again. He has undergone surgery on his left shoulder, and forecasts are that he could be out of cricket for up to seven months. If it does happen to be that long, then Lynn will not be returning to a cricket field as anything but a spectator until February 2018. Of course, it may be sooner, but let’s use February 2018 as the yard stick.
If he isn’t going to be able to play until February, then he will not take part in any of the newly labelled JRT Cup, which is the latest naming rights for the domestic one day tournament that is held throughout October each season. It also means that he will be unavailable for the first five Sheffield Shield matches of the season, which all take place before Christmas. As a result, as a contracted player for Queensland, he would in theory be unavailable for at least two-thirds of the season. So Queensland would be signing him up only as a show of good faith, paying him while he rehabilitating on the sidelines. While that would be magnanimous of the QCA, it would mean they would be essentially throwing money down a well.

Given this is the case, could it not be possible that either the QCA approached Lynn, and suggested that they would like to be able to use his spot for another up-and-coming youngster, and give a kid the chance to train and be contracted so that he could spent the next twelve months developing, and hopefully be able to make the next step? Or that Lynn himself suggested this, knowing that if he wanted he could still play the final third of the season if selected, or that he could use the time to prepare himself for the IPL or the PCL, or other such tournaments, secure in the knowledge that in twelve months’ time he could once again take up his contract with the QCA, and make a claim on further national honours when fully fit? Doesn’t this scenario make more sense than a young man who is on the long-term injured list not taking up a state contract so he could be free to play whatever tournaments he wanted to… if he was ever fit again? Surely it does.

The fact that it is very likely that he will almost completely miss the Big Bash League season surely tends to support that argument. Of course I could be wrong, because I have no information one way or the other, but given how long Lynn is likely to be out of the game, surely common sense has prevailed for both himself and the QCA, and both have agreed on a course that is in the best interests of Queensland cricket.

Peever's Rant Again Highlights Cricket Australia's God Complex

If you weren’t wondering about it before now, you can start immediately.

What the hell is Cricket Australia playing at?

We are now fourteen days in to a period where all of Australia’s cricketers – male and female – are no longer being paid. The current Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which expired on June 30, had been in place for five years. For twenty years, since the players formed their collective Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) and negotiated the first MoU, Australian cricket has enjoyed its most prosperous period both on the field and in terms of the money flowing into the game. Any independent observer could only come to the conclusion that this agreement was a success, and having observed this would conclude that there would be little need to change the setup of the agreement. Sure, there could be tweaks one way or another in order to help certain areas, but the agreement in itself should surely be kept given the success it had achieved.

The board of Cricket Australia disagrees.

The differences and general differences have been well documented – I made my own thoughts on that here - http://westkiama.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/cricket-australia-stand-off-reaches.html

Last week the ACA announced that the players had decided against touring South Africa as part of an A Tour as there was no MoU in place. Furthermore, they announced that no players would be available for any tour until an MoU was negotiated. Cricket Australia (CA) noted its disappointment that the players would not agree to tour, considering the negotiations that had been occurring behind closed doors since June 30. CA suggested that with the ‘progress’ that had been made, the players should have agreed to tour. Of course, there was no mention of what progress had been made further to the same stumbling blocks that had been in place since this whole business began. In essence, CA expected the players to blink, and still they refused.

In the past week, discussions between the two parties have supposedly continued out of the public glare. No mention of progress has occurred, but both sides are aware of the need to come to a somewhat satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible, in order to allow the upcoming tours of Bangladesh and India to go ahead. With no bantering going on in the media, cricket lovers were hopeful progress was being made.

So what possible purpose could be served with the article released yesterday in the Australian newspaper by CA chairman David Peever, except to again antagonise the due process of negotiations? What did he hope to achieve? Its publication only served to throw petrol back on the fire that had hopefully begun to die down.

http://www.cricketaustralia.com.au/media/feature-stories/david-peever-memorandum-of-understanding/2017-07-13

Anything I could say here has already been said better by Gideon Haigh in his column in the same newspaper. 

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/opinion/gideon-haigh/medium-is-the-message-for-cricket-australia-chairman-david-peever/news-story/9c1c1eb0c258af1ba392963d95d46062

The best points from Haigh are as follows:

"As for CA’s generosity, its proposed package, stripped of payroll tax, rolled-over adjustment ledger and pie-eyed prizemoney projections then stretched across a greater number of players reflecting the inclusion of women, actually looks a bit parsimonious.

Finally, who did what to whom? For even if one accepted every other aspect of Peever’s position — and of his commitment to grassroots cricket I would never doubt his sincerity — it is CA that has kept turning up the dial in this dispute. It is CA that attempted to turn the top international cricketers against the rest by seeking to buy the former off with turbocharged rewards.

It is CA that has tried to turn female cricketers against male, with, among other things, an attempt last week to make a big deal out of the last adjustment ledger that was lamer than a three-­legged dog.

It is CA that has sought to turn grassroots cricket against elite cricketers — an entirely bizarre gambit when the success of both are so strongly linked.

And in the end it was CA that walked away from the cricketers, not the other way around, that terminated their relations with extreme prejudice, that isn’t paying them now, that won’t backpay them ever, that opposes them pursuing their livelihoods anywhere else.

In instituting the lockup, CA also caused the players’ intellectual property to revert to the ACA. Yet Peever now criticises the ACA for its decision to “lock up player IP into its own business ventures”. Precisely what was the ACA meant to do? Put it in the fridge?

To surrender something so valuable was the very definition of a “reckless strategy”. And CA’s commercial and broadcasting partners will, one imagines, be letting it know."

CA belligerent approach is obviously working towards one goal - that the players will not allow this to continue much longer because a) they need to earn money and b) they want to play cricket, especially with big series coming up. This is their fallback position, that the public will turn on the players, that the players will cave and CA will get what it wants. 

Once again, it would appear that they have misjudged the situation completely.

Medium is the message for cricket boss David Peever - by Gideon Haigh @ The Australian

I have cut and pasted this article here so everyone can read it, who doesn't have a subscription to The Australian. It is well worth the effort.

By Gideon Haigh.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/opinion/gideon-haigh/medium-is-the-message-for-cricket-australia-chairman-david-peever/news-story/9c1c1eb0c258af1ba392963d95d46062

Marshall McLuhan’s contention that “the medium is the message” remains so beloved of opinion page pundits that it’s overdue a run in the sports pages. And this week’s contribution to the game’s pay dispute by Cricket Australia chairman David Peever could hardly be improved on as an illustration.

For those who dimly recollect a McLuhan bowling seam-up for Western Suburbs or playing on the half-forward flank for Carlton, he was a Canadian philosopher who argued that the form of a message is every bit as significant as its content.

And that, in a dispute as much about authority as it is money, should guide our interpretation of Peever’s having his say via a column published in this newspaper yesterday: that is, he chose not to appear, not to answer questions, not to incur the risk of interruption or contradiction, but simply to publish, in order to control.

Peever said some things — we’ll get to those. Yet the step itself was almost as self-revelatory as the moment a couple of months ago when CA condemned the Australian Cricketers Association for issuing a press release by issuing a press release.

So what did Peever say? Alas, not much. The first four paragraphs foamed with indignation — “most tawdry”, “complete myth”, “deeply insulting”, “deliberately fabricated”, “disrespects all those involved across the cricket community” — about the role of ACA adviser Greg Combet in portraying cricket as “an industrial relations battleground”.

Well, heaven forfend that one should perceive a collective bargaining agreement as having anything to do with industrial relations. But to quote Peever: “The suggestion that CA’s push to modify the player payments model has nothing to do with genuine issues facing the game is an insult to everyone involved at CA, including other members of the board. It is also an insult to all those from across the state and territory associations who understand and support the need for change.”

Goodness me — everyone’s so insulted. But this is the vigorous threshing of a straw man. Precisely nobody says the dispute has “nothing to do with genuine issues facing the game”; they merely sniff the unmistakeable bouquet of bullshit when CA insists that this is all the dispute is about.

“I recognise the place of collective bargaining,” Peever continues proleptically, “and I accept the industrial relations framework in Australia.”

Yet this is a bit like saying that he recognises the place of the speed limit and accepts the custom of driving on the left-hand side of the road.

All anyone worth listening to in this debate has argued — as my colleague Peter Lalor did recently — is that the relationship of the professional athlete to modern sport makes a problematic fit with the conventional relationship of employee to employer because the athlete represents both producer and product.

It’s a simple enough idea. CA has acquiesced in it for 20 years by paying cricketers out of a share of revenue. Those cricketers are entitled to ask what has changed, especially when they see athletes in other competitions, rightly or wrongly, agitating for similar ­status.

In one respect, I’m inclined to agree with Peever. His merely having worked for Rio Tinto should not make of CA a “union basher”. But what CA is doing is behaving as a monopoly. And of monopolies a wariness is always justified, especially when they assert their market power, as CA has in escalating this dispute.

Not that you’d guess this from the victimhood that oozes from Peever’s screed. By his account, CA has always respected the ACA; it has been “very generous”; it has endured a campaign against it of “sustained ferocity” waged by others with a “reckless strategy”.

Yet an express principle of CA’s proposal, unchanged from the very beginning, was that it cease to provide funding for the ACA — a hitherto uncontroversial convention, in recognition of the union covering 100 per cent of Australia’s male and female international and domestic cricketers. What could have been more adversarial?

As for CA’s generosity, its proposed package, stripped of payroll tax, rolled-over adjustment ledger and pie-eyed prizemoney projections then stretched across a greater number of players reflecting the inclusion of women, actually looks a bit parsimonious.

Finally, who did what to whom? For even if one accepted every other aspect of Peever’s position — and of his commitment to grassroots cricket I would never doubt his sincerity — it is CA that has kept turning up the dial in this dispute. It is CA that attempted to turn the top international cricketers against the rest by seeking to buy the former off with turbocharged rewards.

It is CA that has tried to turn female cricketers against male, with, among other things, an attempt last week to make a big deal out of the last adjustment ledger that was lamer than a three-­legged dog.

It is CA that has sought to turn grassroots cricket against elite cricketers — an entirely bizarre gambit when the success of both are so strongly linked.

And in the end it was CA that walked away from the cricketers, not the other way around, that terminated their relations with extreme prejudice, that isn’t paying them now, that won’t backpay them ever, that opposes them pursuing their livelihoods anywhere else.

In instituting the lockup, CA also caused the players’ intellectual property to revert to the ACA. Yet Peever now criticises the ACA for its decision to “lock up player IP into its own business ventures”. Precisely what was the ACA meant to do? Put it in the fridge?

To surrender something so valuable was the very definition of a “reckless strategy”. And CA’s commercial and broadcasting partners will, one imagines, be letting it know.

In the meantime, players have demonstrated their good faith by continuing to train, keeping their own counsel, and hoping for resolution, while CA have gone on blaming everyone but themselves. And while the message of Peever’s communique yesterday may have strained for the odd conciliatory sentiment, the medium tells otherwise — that CA remains no closer to understanding how clumsily it has gone about its work.

Cricket Australia Stand-Off Reaches Doomsday

Congratulations to both Cricket Australia (CA) and the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) on their inability to come to terms before today on a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in regards to the payment structure of players and cricket at all levels. As anyone with half an ear on the news would know, the five year previous MoU ran out today, meaning that both parties have had five years to ensure they came to a new agreement before today. And that couldn't be achieved.

People's views and perspectives on the whole issue will differ, but let's look at the surface. Back in the late 1990's Australia's cricketers decided they needed to stand up and form a union of sorts in order to negotiate better terms for themselves from the Australian Cricket Board. The 18 month impasse of bitching back and forth, with the ACB launching a very public campaign looking to make the players look greedy by publishing their earnings, also came with a threat that international matches could be forfeited by a strike by the players. It was all very nasty and should have been handled better, except that the ACB wanted to keep the status quo where they controlled all the finances and only handed out what they deemed the players were worthy, while the players union, headed by Tim May, was trying to ensure that players at all levels received worthy remuneration and could forge a living through cricket, and therefore allowing these players to dedicate themselves completely to the game, and therefore in theory become better players and improve Australian cricket in general. Once the smoke had cleared, the ACA had secured a landmark agreement with the ACB, allowing for 25% of the ACB's revenue streams to go to the players, meaning they had become active partners in the promotion and success of Australian cricket.

Following this, Australia became the greatest cricketing nation on the planet, for arguably ten years as their best players dominated the world, and their first class compatriots pushed them hard by scoring runs and taking wickets. Without the MoU that was secured, would players of the talent of Martin Love and Brad Hodge - as an example - have continued to play cricket? Their talents deserved recognition at the highest level, but they were unable to break into the national team due to the immense talent that was available. However, if they had been playing for peanuts at Shield level, as they would have been before the initial MoU was brokered, would they have continued to play and keep the pressure on those above them? More than likely, they would have moved out of cricket into a career that paid them more than just $1,000 match payments. The MoU kept them in the game, and as such kept Australia's cricket strong and the envy of the world.

The three further re-negotiations of the MoU, every five years, has retained the concept of the 25% income flow to the players, with very little angst from either side of the pond. So why now, with Australian cricket on the cusp of a resurgence in the men's game, with the Big Bash League drawing in hundreds of thousand to matches and therefore huge cash flow, and with the women's game coming to national prominence and increasing audiences, has CA decided they want to rock the boat and not only change the formula that has worked so well, but do so in what appears to be a belligerent way? What exactly has changed?
The answer is - CA has changed its structure, bringing in businessmen rather than State board representatives, and they want their money back.

CA until five years ago was built by nominations from the State Associations. They acted in what they believed was the best interests of Australia cricket. They weren't always considered to be right, but the period of resurgence through the 1990's and 2000's gave them great heart. Then came the restructure, and that system was thrown out with the Argus Report review, and now we have a board that has some cricket lovers retained, but now also has men and women who made their names in big business, such as David Peever, former Managing Director of Rio Tinto, Bob Every, former Chairman of Wesfarmers and Boral, and Michelle Tredenick, a Director of the Bank of Queensland. These people simply don't like dealing with unions - something Peever in particular has been quite happy to admit. They'd rather talk face to face with the individuals, hoping to divide opinion and in the long run get what they want rather than what the union may want. Bringing on board Kevin Roberts, former NSW batsman but also has been involved in reformations of companies such as Adidas, Colorado and Canterbury, as chief negotiator, CA has come to the party with a corporate mindset. They are gathering the profit streams, and they want to be able to dish them out as they see fit, and not just give a percentage to what they see as a union.
The ACA and the players of course want the current scenario to continue. They see it as having been a success, and cannot see why it should be changed given the success they see that it has brought.
So we have come to this point - as far back as November last year it was obviously this was going to end up being a problem, when CA tried to negotiate with the players at the top, including captains Steve Smith and Meg Lanning, while the players all rebuffed these approaches and insisted all negotiations should go through the ACA, Which CA continued to refuse to do. At different times James Sutherland and Pat Howard have also thrown in their opinion that the payers need to make the changes they were suggesting. It honestly came across as employer bullying at its worst.

It is all very nasty and should have been handled better, except that CA wants to go Back to the Future where they control all the finances and only hand out what they deem the players are worthy, while the players union, headed by Alistair Nicholson, is trying to ensure that players at all levels receive worthy remuneration and can forge a living through cricket, and therefore allowing these players to dedicate themselves completely to the game, and therefore in theory become better players and improve Australian cricket in general. Does this sound familiar at all?

As I said, opinions will vary. Despite CA suggesting they need the funds to better remunerate grassroots cricket, it comes across as a money grab. It's a big business attitude. It just feels like they think they can out-wait the ACA and get what they want, because the players will not want to kill off their own employment. They say the ACA has not entered negotiations, but given the ACA believes the current MoU terms are working, why would they negotiate that away? They have agreed in principle to lower the stream of revenue from 25% to 22.5% as well as taking out revenue from Milo cricket and club registrations. They have also shown they are putting $33 million back into grass roots cricket themselves. CA has simply refused to accept anything except the dissolvement of the current 25% of revenue going to the players. It's a rort.

So where to now? The whole debacle makes both sides look bad no matter which way you look at it. The possible forfeiture of the A tour to South Africa, or worse the now off again but on again tour to Bangladesh, is a very bad look for Australian cricket. And yet, no matter how many people come out and slag off the cricketers, suggesting they earn too much and they have it so much better than anyone else and that they should just accept the huge money CA is offering them, is not seeing the big picture. A corporate employee is trying to entice the elite employees with more money, so that they can end up having to pay less to the lower class employees and inevitably keep more money in their own pockets, without actually having to divulge how much money they think they will earn over the next five years. By doing this they claim to be doing it for the little guys, the grass roots, who they promise they will send more money to as a result of their ideas. It all smacks of absolute bullshit, and the players know it. As much as I want to see this resolved and our cricketers back doing what they should be doing, this looks like it has a very long way to go before that occurs, and the fate of the Ashes looks to be doomed as a result.

40 Years Ago - Centenary Test 1977 Australia V England

Today - March 17 - marks exactly 40 years to the day that the Centenary Test concluded at the MCG, with Australia defeating England by 45 runs - the exact margin that they had won by 100 years previously.
It therefore marks exactly 40 years to the day that I had appendix removed, as I was taken to hospital for the procedure that day. Dad was forced to watch the scintillating final session of the match from the TV in the waiting room as I was being prepared for surgery. Sorry Dad.

For those that haven't seen this video, I can  only suggest you take the 70 minutes to watch it. It was (from my hazy memories of when I was 7 years old) an amazing match, and with so many amazing performances it is impossible to list them all.

Enjoy!