All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this content in any form or by any means. Foreword

Wisden tells us everything about the game of crick et,always has from the time of the first issue. From the moment I read my first copy during the Australian tour of 1953,I’ve always thought that a story lies in every one of the hundreds of pages. One of the very biggest, part of cricket’s evolution, came in the 1978 edition. This covered the 1977 formation of World Series Cricket,and the ensuing meetings of the International Cricket Conference and the High Court hear ing.After 31 days, Mr Justice Slade found on al l counts for World Series Cricket and for the three pla yers, Tony Greig,John Snow and Mike Procter.He ruled that the ICC resolutions had been in “unreasonable restraint of trade”. In a delicious touch of irony, the 1978 Wisden story began opposite an item on page 122 recalling that coloured shirts,whic h had been commonly worn, had disappeared from crick et in the period 1880–1895.

World Series Cricket began in 1977,but the seeds that would produce cricket’s age of revolution had been so wn earlier.In 1976,Channel Nine had offer ed the Australian Board of Control $1,500,000 for th ree years’television coverage of Australian crick et;the Board, though, ac cepted a $200,000 offer for th ree years from the Australian Broadcasting Commission – quite a difference by way ofincome for grass-roots crick et.No one, other than the people concerned on the Boar d and those from Channel Nine,had any inkling this had happened.

By chance, however, this coincided with meetings of aggrieved and extremely disgruntled Australian cricketers who had been trying for four years, without the slightest success, to improve their payments from the Board.One of the pla yers’ meetings had been with Bob Hawke,a crick et-lover and astute politician who had advised the players that under no circumstances in their discussions with the Board should they indicate they were thinking along the lines of forming a union. It should only be noted as a Pla yers’Association.

One ofthe more significant happenings had occurred in 1975 when Ian Chappell was captain of the Australian team that travelled to England via Canada,for the inaugural World Cup. Chappell, who was both international crick eter and professional journalist, had ad vised the Australian Cricket Board he would be writing articles for newspapers whilst on tour.He received a letter informing him that this was not possible and he was not, under any circumstances, to have cricket articles published during the tour.Both Chappell and I were members ofthe Australian Journalists’Association which in May 1975 wrote to Sir Donald Bradman expressing concern that Chappell and Ashley Mallett,also a professional journalist,appeared to be bound by restrictive Cricket Board legislation that affected their livelihoods.

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All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this content in any form or by any means.