It’s a heat-wave and England captain Greig “ups” the temperature
The summer of 1976 was a significant period in my young life. I’d finished primary school, was preparing for life at ‘big’ (secondary) school, millions of people across Britain were experiencing a lengthy, drought ridden heatwave and the West Indies arrived for their 10th Test cricket tour of England.
Interest in the five Test series dramatically increased following comments made by Tony Greig, England’s South African-born captain, who was raised in Eastern Cape province by a Scottish father and a South African mother. Before the first Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, Greig was interviewed on Sportsnight, a BBC midweek television sports programme. Towards the end of the interview, Greig insisted that, ‘You must remember that the West Indies, these guys, if they get on top, they are magnificent cricketers. But if they are down, they grovel, and I intend with the help of Closey (Brian Close) and a few others to make them grovel’.
With his South African accent firmly intact, and South African sports teams banned from international competition, because of their government’s apartheid system of racial segregation and state-enforced discrimination, Greig’s plan to make the West Indies ‘grovel’ was observed by some as promoting a cricket contest associated with racial battle lines.
We were stunned – says Viv Richards – and it fired us up
As Viv Richards, on his first Test tour in England, recalls, ‘Suddenly the news came on about the ‘grovel’ remark. It simply stunned us. I do not know to this day whether someone was deliberately trying to stir up trouble, strange things like that do happen in Test cricket, but somebody told us that the word ‘grovel’ was often used to put down the blacks in South Africa. Of course, Greig was a South African so that only served to add fuel to our anger. Even if Greig had not been having a dig at us, his remark really worked wonders for us. We were so fired up; it was as if he had unintentionally handed us the ammunition we needed to win the series. And that is what happened’.
I was also desperate for the West Indies to win and rub Greig’s remarks and his team into the dust. However, as a young schoolboy in England, I’d recently spent months scanning local, and more distant, sports shops to buy a pair of St. Peter (SP) mitten batting gloves as worn by Tony Greig. Greig also played in England for Sussex, the club I briefly supported because I felt sorry for them after they lost to Gloucestershire in the 1973 Gillette Cup final at Lord’s.
The bell tolls – and it’s Greig who grovels
The first Test at Trent Bridge was attended by Robert Bradford. Two years earlier, Robert migrated to Britain with his family from Trinidad as a nine-year old schoolboy. As Robert remembers, ‘The atmosphere at Trent Bridge wasn’t hostile, in fact it was quite jovial, but there was a certain level of contempt in the West Indian crowd for Tony Greig and his comments. There was a huge guy behind me who had an enormous bell. You could take things like that into a cricket ground then. And every time (Viv) Richards hit a four that day, and Gordon Greenidge and Roy Fredericks hit a number of fours as well, the guy would shout out ‘Grovel, Grovel’ at Tony Greig and ring his bell!’
My most memorable moment of the 1976 series was the final Test at The Oval played from August 12 to 17. I excitedly watched the match at home on television, as Viv Richards hit his highest Test score of 291 runs, a magnificent innings – with the ball often racing from his bat across a spacious and parched Oval outfield to the boundary. Like the rest of the country, The Oval was starved of rain for weeks during the ongoing heatwave.
Greig received harsh treatment during the series from some West Indian supporters, although much of it was good natured. At The Oval, Greig reacted to taunts by West Indian supporters by ‘grovelling’ and crawling on his knees across the outfield. Tony Cozier, commentating for BBC radio, described Greig’s grovel performance as a ‘good little touch,’ which was appreciated by the West Indies spectators. As Greig, who in many ways was a natural showman, recalled, ‘They (the West Indian spectators) loved it and at the end of the match I had no option, all I could do was crawl off, grovel off myself.’
West Indies beat England 3-0 in the Test series, as West Indian cricket continued to play a central role as a medium of Caribbean self-expression and unity in Britain. During the following year, Greig emerged as a ‘recruiter-in-chief’ for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC) ‘revolution’ in Australia. Many of the 1976 West Indian tourists to England signed up to become Packer rebels, and agreed to participate in this new world of cricket, which further enhanced their standards of professionalism and provided increased salaries.
Author:
Colin Babb is the author of They Gave the Crowd Plenty Fun: West Indian Cricket and its Relationship with the British-Resident Caribbean Diaspora, and 1973 and Me: The England v West Indies Test Series and a Memorable Childhood Year.
Comment from Donald Menzies: Great article. Helps me learn more details as experienced by different observers of my missed history of the beautiful game.