GOWER GRACE; BOYCOTT GRIT

Contrast in style as England showed that they could win in Perth

Paul Edwards continues his delve into the Ashes archive and makes a trip back to 1978/9 when, under Mike Brearley’s shrewd guidance, England beat a Packer-weakened Australia by 5-1 after epic efforts in Perth and Sydney

There has been something missing from this winter’s cricket and I am not referring to an English victory. For the first time in seven Ashes series the TV coverage has not been hosted by the droll, urbane and ever-so-slightly sardonic personality that David Gower presents to the watching public.

Some viewers may be untroubled by his absence; few professions are more susceptible to the Marmite metaphor than broadcasting.Yet for some of us the sight of Gower fronting Sky’s coverage has been part of each English summer and a reminder of the most stylish batsman of our time. The latter is the more significant prompt, of course, for it recalls easeful cover drives, airy clips through midwicket and deft tucks backward of square, the ball gathering pace as it ran off the blade. Few batsmen have given more pleasure to spectators than Gower yet only when they attempted to reproduce his casual grace did cricketers realise how rare was his talent.

But memories of Gower’s batting currently evoke rather more than aesthetic nostalgia. This is the week in which the WACA hosts its last Test and it was at Perth that Gower made the first of his nine Ashes centuries in England’s only victory on the ground in 13 attempts. That was achieved 39 years ago during a summer in which traditional Tests competed with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket for the public’s attention with almost all the best Australian cricketers playing for the WSC team. The result was a 5-1 victory for an MCC side shorn of four near certain picks yet which was still too good for what Bernard Whimpress described as “virtually a third Australian XI”.

However, while the official side captained by Graham Yallop often struggled to compete against a strong and united England team which was superbly marshalled by Mike Brearley, that series contained more fluctuations than the simple result suggests. Australian supporters could be heartened by the emergence of Rodney Hogg, who made his Test debut at Brisbane and ended the six games with 41 wickets. Running in off little more than 20 yards and operating in short spells due to a slight asthmatic condition, Hogg was a truly fast bowler and only Terry Alderman has taken more wickets in a series for Australia. Supporting Hogg was Alan Hurst, whose 25 wickets in the 78-9 Ashes included six dismissals of Geoffrey Boycott.

The Australian batting was more vulnerable but the hosts still made four centuries, a couple of them scored by the skipper Graham Yallop, and a series which saw the Test debut of 23-year-old Allan Border can scarcely be considered unproductive. England were frequently made to fight hard for their victories and never were the contrasting methods employed by Brearley’s batsmen more in evidence than on the first day of the Perth Test.

The game began badly for England, who had lost both Graham Gooch and Derek Randall with only three runs scored when Brearley joined Boycott to add 38 in two hours for the third wicket. It was a stand which blunted the main Australian assault with the new ball in conditions which favoured the pace bowlers. And at a time when Boycott – another Marmite commentator – is being criticised in some papers it may be useful to recall the opening batsman when he was making his best contributions to English cricket.

Brearley captured some of these qualities in his outstanding book The Return of the Ashes:

“As I stood at the non-striker’s end, and watched him avoid yet another hostile ball, I felt a wave of admiration for my partner, wiry, slight, dedicated, a lonely man doing a lonely job all these years. What was it that compelled him to prove himself again and again among his peers?”

For most of that day, though, Brearley had to contemplate that question from the dressing room as he watched Boycott and Gower put on 149 in an unbroken fourthwicket stand. The outfield was lush at the WACA that year but Gower still managed to stroke nine fours and reached his century just before close of play. Weaving inside the many short balls bowled by Hogg and Hurst, he displayed many of the qualities in his eighth Test that were to sustain England until 1992, when his omission from the team to tour India caused a special general meeting of MCC to be called. “Ask him to talk about a ‘creamy’ off-drive off Yardley and he shrugs slightly and says, ‘the ball just seemed to go off the bat’,” wrote Brearley.

“He plays his shots with perfect timing and minimum movement or fuss.”

When Gower reached his hundred he became his country’s youngest centurion in an Ashes Test since Denis Compton at Trent Bridge in 1938. And also like Compton, Gower made 102 and went on to become the most elegant batsmen of his age. Cricket’s echoes are rarely so clear; its poetry is not always so resonant.

And lest any pundit be too keen to mount the pulpit steps and rail against excess this winter, let us remember that it was probably fortuitous that some previous England tours were not subjected to the media scrutiny visited on current trips. For as Gower records in his autobiography, An

Endangered Species, he celebrated his century not wisely but too well,

“It was then that I made my mistake, opting to spend the evening in the Sheraton Hotel bar, rather than joining a general excursion to the cinema, which would have been the sensible option,” he writes. “The suspicion I had overdone things slightly was confirmed when I bumped into our physiotherapist Bernard Thomas in the lift and struggled to bid him a coherent good night.”

Gower added only one more run before being bowled by Hogg the next morning but Boycott went on to make 77 in seven hours and 34 minutes. He faced 337 balls and his only four included two overthrows.

“Boycott has done for Test cricket what Jack The Ripper did for door-to-door salesmen,” concluded a wag at the WACA. The more laconic former Australian captain Lindsay Hassett merely observed that it was “an exceptional innings by someone who could not find the middle of the bat”.

Boycott might merely observe that it contributed to a first-innings total which eventually set up England’s 166-run victory and a 2-0 lead in the series. The Essex left-arm seamer John Lever took four wickets in the second innings and Geoff Miller another three as Australia failed to get halfway towards their target of 328.

Led by Hogg, who took ten wickets, and Graeme Wood, whose patient century was the only score above 49, Australia won the Melbourne Test by 103 runs, and when England were bowled out for 152 on the first day of the next match at Sydney, it seemed like a vital moment in the series had been reached. This was true, albeit not in the way some Australians imagined.

“We had reached a critical point in the tour,” wrote Brearley, “As soon as he had a beer in his hand [Mike] Hendrick sought me out to suggest that we had a meeting, then and there, to make the seriousness of our position crystal clear, and to inculcate a new resolve…

“Sweaty clothes and towels hung down from lines; we had to lift them up to be able to see each other. Hendo said that we should go back to basics, to square one. We had played that day like a second-rate county side.” When the historians write about England’s

Gower added only one more run before being bowled by Hogg the next morning but Boycott went on to 77 in seven hours 34 minutes

comfortable victory in that Ashes series it is vital that they remember that meeting at the SCG. One of Brearley’s many skills was to weave his players’ contributions and personalities into the cloth of his own leadership. The 1978-9 tour was not short of strong characters or eccentric talents; the party included Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Derek Randall and Phil Edmonds. Brearley managed to harness most of them behind a common purpose to which their own foibles took second place.

In the Sydney Test England restricted Australia’s lead to 142 and Randall then batted 21 minutes short of ten hours to make 150. Needing 205 to square the series, Australia were bowled out for 111, John Emburey taking four of the wickets and the underestimated Miller another three. By the end of the series the Derbyshire all-rounder would be joint leading wicket-taker with Ian Botham.

The crisis had passed. The remaining two Tests were won in relative comfort although the victory at Adelaide was achieved partly thanks to a resolute 97 from Bob Taylor, a wicketkeeper so good that almost nobody noticed him.

At the conclusion of the final match there was even a mournful tribute from an Australian musician and the Barmy Army’s Billy Cooper may note that he was not the first supporter to offer a tuneful accompaniment to the cricket. Alex Bannister captured the moment for the 1980 Wisden.

“A lone trumpeter on the sparsely filled Hill at Sydney grimly symbolised Australia’s embarrassing defeats, domestic confusions and divided loyalties by sounding the Last Post as England won the sixth Test inside four days and the series by five matches to one.” Brearley took his England team back to Australia the next winter when, with the urn not at stake, they lost 3-0 to Greg Chappell’s full-strength side. All the same, as Joe Root searches for rallying cries amid the present discontents, he might do worse than remember Brearley’s team of ’78-9 and their place in the WACA’s proud history.

A lone trumpeter on the sparsely filled Hill at Sydney sounded the Last Post as England won the sixth Test inside four days and the series 5-1