than many people think
Telford Vice Cricket
The fate of the Titanic may be the major single reason 1912 sticks in the minds of many who would otherwise have no cause to hang on to the events of 87 years ago.
But another, almost as damp saga played out in the same year was the first attempt to establish what has grown up into the modern World Cup.
Unsurprisingly, it sank from history with rather fewer traces than a maritime disaster.
Six weeks after the Titanic was wrecked the first ball was bowled in a Test match between Australia and South Africa – played oddly enough at Old Trafford, Manchester.
Kerry Packer’s great-grandfather was perhaps a gleam in some ancestral convict’s eye, but the 1912 equivalent of the man who was to effect a revolution in cricket more than seven decades later could, with a dash of poetic licence, have been Abe Bailey.
As befitted a prominent old boy of the British Empire, Sir Abe maintained a keen interest in cricket – in fact playing three first-class matches for Transvaal – while building newspaper dynasties and generally being a good colonialist.
In 1912 his grand plan for a world championship of cricket came together when England, Australia and South Africa – the only members of the snooty Test-playing nations club at the time – contested the Triangular Tournament.
However, one of the wettest summers in English history, a South African team much weaker than either of the opposing teams and the fact that Australia did not send their strongest team contributed to the venture’s failure.
It was not until the first World Cup 63 years later that the opportunity arose again to officially crown the champions of the game, albeit only in the limited-overs format.
Apartheid had seen South Africa banished from the international arena, so in June 1975 the six Test-playing nations – England, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, India and Pakistan – were joined by Sri Lanka and East Africa in the first World Cup.
Unlike in 1912, not a ball was lost to the weather. Innings consisted of 60 overs, which meant an early start and a consequent advantage to the team fielding first as the ball would seam alarmingly early on.
Predictably, Sri Lanka and East Africa were the whipping boys, while the match of the tournament proved to be the West Indies’ one-wicket win over Pakistan. Undisciplined batting by the West Indies meant the last- wicket pair of Deryck Murray and Andy Roberts were left to score 64 runs to win, a job they completed with the fourth ball of the final over.
Australia and the West Indies emerged from the two groups to contest the final at Lord’s. Roy Fredericks hit the first ball of the match for six, a portent to the towering target of 291 the West Indians set Australia.
Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai set it up with a stand of 149, which remains the fourth- wicket record, and – fittingly considering their undoubted supremacy in Test cricket – the West Indies were the first World Cup champions.
The tournament returned to England four years later, but that was one of the few common factors about a sport which had been changed forever in the interim by Packer’s revolution.
Not the least of the consequences was that England and Australia refused to select the players who had defected to Packer’s “circus”, this despite a truce having been reached between the game’s authorities and the Australian enfant terrible.
That left the way clear for the West Indies to sweep to their second title, although England surprised many by reaching the final. Once there, however, they crashed from 183-2 to 194 all out.
Viv Richards hit 11 fours and three sixes in his 138 not out, one of the finest innings ever seen in limited-overs cricket, and Joel Garner’s final spell consisted of five wickets for four runs in 11 balls.
Zimbabwe made their World Cup bow in 1983, which saw the tournament again played in England but with the format changed. The two groups of four teams remained, but they played each other twice to double the number of games.
The West Indies seemed set for their third crown when they reached the final with lowly rated India, who were duly dismissed for a mere 183.
But India had come of age in the one-day game and bowled impressively tightly to record their only World Cup triumph to date. The tournament moved to India and Pakistan in 1987, and the other significant change was the reduction of innings to 50 overs.
England and Australia advanced to what turned out to be the closest World Cup final, with Australia winning by seven runs.
Despite the absence of a subcontinental representative, Eden Gardens was jammed with 80 000 spectators to watch Australia total 253. England seemed on course to win, but faltered when captain Graham Gooch reverse swept Allan Border’s first ball to be caught behind.
The upshot was 36 runs being required off the last three overs. Phil de Freitas hit two fours and a six in the 48th – leaving 19 needed off 12 balls.
But the 49th, bowled by Steve Waugh, yielded two runs and claimed the wicket of De Freitas as Australia surged to victory.
South Africans will remember the 1992 tournament in Australasia not for Pakistan’s championship, nor the use for the first time in the World Cup of coloured clothing and a white ball, but for their team’s fairytale return to the world stage and a farcical exit at the semi-final stage.
“South Africa to win need 22 runs off 1 ball,” read the giant scoreboard at the Sydney Cricket Ground as Kepler Wessels’s team fell victim to the diabolical rain rules that ushered England into the final.
Sri Lanka exploded the myth of their perceived minnowhood in emphatic style to win the 1996 World Cup, staged in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Two groups of six contested the league rounds with four teams from each going on to the quarter-finals. Kenya, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates were the non-Test playing entrants.
Kenya caused arguably the biggest upset in World Cup history when they beat a jaded West Indies, but the Sri Lankans’ whirlwind batting grabbed the most headlines.
Assisted by the new fielding restrictions which effectively reduced the first 15 overs of the innings to unhindered boundary bashing, Sri Lanka were able to thump opponents into submission largely via the blazing bats of Sanath Jayasuria and Aravinda da Silva.
Australia, who had brazenly forfeited their league match against the eventual champions in Sri Lanka because of security concerns, felt the brunt of irony when they were beaten by seven wickets by the selfsame opponents in the final at Lahore.
And so back to England for the seventh World Cup. Or, in light of the 1912 experiment, should it be billed as the eighth?
The format has changed again, with the two groups of six thinning into the Super Six stage after the preliminary round. Points from the single-round league will be carried into the Super Six, which is to feature the top three teams in each group.
Each team to advance will play three games, the top four qualifying for the semi- finals.
South Africa, with their total-onslaught approach, are among the favourites. Which makes one wonder just who Sir Abe Bailey – the quintessential “soutie” as he was born in Cradock and died in Cape Town, but lived his life as an Englishman – would have been shouting for.
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