Jack Bailey
Cricketer and administrator whose troubled tenure at MCC ended in discord and controversy
JACK BAILEY, who has died aged 88, was secretary of the Marylebone Cricket Club for 13 years from 1974. His tenure covered a testing time, as cricket struggled to become fully professional, and ended in controversy when he was forced to resign – just as MCC’S bicentenary celebrations started in earnest – over a power struggle with the new Test and County Cricket Board, the forerunner of today’s ECB.
The fledgling board was exercised about arrangements for major matches, of which the biggest were always at Lord’s: Bailey was keen to protect the interests of MCC and its members. The matter was complicated in that the two bodies had many administrators in common. Bailey was always suspicious of those wearing “too many hats”, and himself argued MCC’S case single-mindedly.
“He’d have flourished in the Brexit debate,” said Ossie Wheatley, the former Glamorgan captain who later chaired the TCCB. “He could only ever see one side of the story.”
An imposingly tall man with a hearty chuckle – and a fondness for cigarettes, wine and whisky – Bailey had joined MCC as assistant secretary in 1967, when they were in sole control of the game. He was mainly responsible for marketing and public relations, and was given a stiff early test with the cancellation of England’s tour of South Africa in 1968-69, after the late selection of Basil D’oliveira, the Cape Town-born non-white player, who was deemed unacceptable by the apartheid government of the time.
It was becoming apparent that extra funding would only be made available if MCC – a private club – ceded responsibility for cricket’s administration. And so, in 1974, the TCCB was set up. Another MCC assistant secretary, Donald Carr, took charge there, while Bailey succeeded Billy Griffith as secretary of MCC.
Many felt the pair had actually been given the wrong jobs. Bernie Coleman, a cricket-loving publican whose flair for PR made him a useful committee man, saw Carr as the traditionalist and Bailey as more commercially astute; he had already negotiated several lucrative TV contracts and led the teams that set up the Sunday League and Benson & Hedges Cup.
The TCCB’S new marketing man, Peter Lush, arrived at Lord’s expecting a genial handover, but instead was cold-shouldered by Bailey, who set about fighting MCC’S corner. “Well, that was his job,” admitted Raman Subba Row, a former friend soon to be seen as a foe.
The arguments between MCC and TCCB piled up: who allocates the fixtures, who decides the ticket prices – everything down to who introduces the teams to the Queen. The real problem, according to Lush, was that “Jack wouldn’t accept that overall the game was run by the TCCB.”
Matters came to a head late in 1986, when Colin Cowdrey became MCC’S president for the bicentenary year that was to follow. His collection of hats included senior roles at the TCCB, and discussions about the seemingly intractable problems had convinced him that Bailey was the main stumbling block. When a committee meeting started with the secretary being asked to leave the room, the writing was on the wall, and Bailey resigned soon afterwards.
It was an unfortunate end for someone who had always been pragmatic and persuasive in the committee room. From his office high in the pavilion, with its fabulous view of Lord’s, Bailey admitted to being “possessive, proprietorial, proud, conscious of a great heritage”.
He fought to keep anyone but the teams and umpires off the playing area (his thoughts on the hordes that now invade the hallowed turf pre-match would be unprintable), insisted that everyone wore white even when practising, and walked behind the stands to the Nursery nets rather than round the boundary: one clash about this led to Bailey being doused by orange juice thrown by an enraged Dennis Lillee.
Bailey was also the de facto secretary of the International Cricket Council, which was run by MCC at the time. As such he took a major role in the 1977 Packer Affair, particularly the doomed court case in which the proposed bans on players who had signed for World Series Cricket were thrown out.
Before all this, Bailey had been a handy opening bowler. Using his height well, he took seven for 32 in his first match for Essex, against Nottinghamshire at Southend in 1953, starting with the England opener Reg Simpson.
“No single achievement on the cricket field filled me with more wonder or more joy,” said Bailey of his haul, which helped him top the first-class averages for the season with 25 wickets at 13.04. After 77 wickets the following summer he went up to Oxford, and captained them against Cambridge (led by Ted Dexter) at Lord’s in 1958.
That was almost the end of his first-class career, although he did have remarkable match figures of 13 for 57 – including a career-best eight for 24 in the second innings – for MCC against Ireland in Dublin in 1966, a performance which perhaps eased the interview for the Lord’s job he started the following year. He had been working for the Reed Group, doubling as the rugby correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph, after a spell teaching (and running the cricket) at Bedford School.
Jack Arthur Bailey was born in south London on June 22 1930, the son of Horace, a policeman, and Elsie. He shone at sport at Christ’s Hospital, where he captained a cricket team that contained John Stephenson, his eventual successor as MCC secretary.
He married Julianne Squier in 1957: they had a son and two daughters, but the marriage was eventually dissolved. In 1991 he married Vivian Robins (née Mackay), whose first husband Charles was the son of a former England captain.
After his departure from Lord’s he covered cricket for The Times and wrote two books, a biography of his Essex namesake Trevor Bailey, and Conflicts in Cricket, a catalogue of the controversies in which he had been involved.
Happily, there was a rapprochement in later years. In 1995, Bailey joined MCC’S general purposes subcommittee, and also had a spell on the main committee.