On the Ashes by Gideon Haigh

Author:Gideon Haigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2023-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

The 1972 Ashes

EVEN, TEMPERED (2016)

Five being an odd number, Ashes series are implicitly directed towards a decisive outcome. Yet every so often, one has finished with honours even, including consecutively in 1965–66 and 1968, each featuring three rather wearying draws. The Ashes of 1972 belongs in a subtly different category, the touring team having been uniquely compelled to come back twice from deficits: played out, as John Arlott put it, ‘at full competition without acrimony’ and providing ‘constant surprise and suspense’, it is in some respects a forgotten classic of the Test genre, owned by nobody. And although Ian Chappell’s team were to leave the trophy behind, their spirit and skill heralded a resurgence in Australian cricket after a period of austerity. With the addition of a few moustaches and the exposure of a little more chest hair, this was the team that would lead the decade, the names of Chappell, Lillee, Marsh, Stackpole, Edwards, Walters and Mallett et al. coming trippingly from the tongue.

In advance of the tour, Australian Test selector Neil Harvey told Chappell that he had been charged with ‘a team of goers’ – this was by way of consoling him for the non-selection of Australia’s most experienced batsman, Bill Lawry, and pace bowler, Graham McKenzie. If some choices yielded little, they were all decisively forward-looking, and on which the captain was free to place his stamp. Just as well, perhaps, that he had one. Grandsons of a former Australian captain, Victor Richardson, Ian and his brother Greg liked their cricket with a touch of flair and a philosophy of selflessness. England, meanwhile, was cannily captained by Ray Illingworth, and contained many of the players he had led successfully while recapturing the Ashes eighteen months earlier. After 31 wickets at 23 against Australia away, John Snow would take 24 wickets at 23 against them at home, a noteworthy double.

The Australian campaign began inauspiciously. At Old Trafford, they extended to twelve their streak without an Ashes victory, suffering an 89-run defeat, mainly by losing all ten first-innings wickets for 74. The twenty-five-year-old South African émigré Tony Greig marked his Test debut with 57 and 62, five wickets for 74 and a crucial slip catch. But Snow’s eight for 128 was matched by Lillee’s eight for 106, and the game’s highest scorer, with 91 from 111 balls to complement six catches, was the pugnacious Rod Marsh. The emerging dynamic was of experience versus energy, and at Lord’s it veered back violently.

The Second Test ranks as one of the most extraordinary of all. In 1970, West Australian Bob Massie had come to England to try his luck, taken three expensive second XI wickets at Northants, and not been offered a contract. Now, in dim and muggy conditions, he swung, swerved and slanted the ball every which way, transfixing batsman after batsman from the Nursery End, from round the wicket as well as over: by early on the second day, he had become only the third bowler to claim eight Test wickets on debut.

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