Australians strike a sensible note after board play it tough (24 Nov 1997)

24 November 1997

Australians strike a sensible note after board play it tough

By Michael Parkinson

BY thrashing New Zealand with a day to spare the best cricket team in the world continue to demonstrate what can be achieved when individual talents are linked to an unshakeable collective resolve. A few days ago it seemed likely that the same unity and strength of purpose would lead the players into direct confrontation with the Australian Cricket Board by a series of strikes which would effectively ruin a one-day competition between Australia and the visiting New Zealand and South African teams.

Yesterday the crisis ended when the players withdrew their threats. This sudden and unexpected change of heart is not easily explained. Could it be for all their bold talk the players lacked the necessary resolve to strike? Were they perhaps responding to public hostility to their plans to say nothing of a media campaign which, with one or two exceptions, has portrayed them as greedy, unprincipled ratbags singlehandedly defiling the baggy green cap while at the same time corrupting the youth of the country with their selfish and thoughtless behaviour? And those were some of the more moderate opinions.

What can be said with some certainty is the players were not persuaded to change their minds by the seductive ways of the Australian Cricket Board. To say the board have an intractable approach to solving disputes would be generous and they must take a considerable share of the blame for strike action being contemplated as an option, never mind planned as a last resort.

Any sane person examining the players' concerns would agree there was a case to answer. The bulk of Australian cricketers do not get a fair deal. For every superstar earning £200,000 a year there are 30 or 40 on £14,000 a year and much less. The players want the right to bargain collectively. They want to negotiate under the same conditions granted every other employee. These are basic fundamental rights and yet the board react as if they were part of some Marxist plot. They also want a bigger share of the cake, particularly with a new and much-improved television deal on the horizon.

Enter James Erskine, hired by the Australian Cricketers' Association to argue their case and do the deals. Erskine is a skilled negotiator. Until recently, he worked for Mark McCormack. Say no more. He recruited Graham Halbish, a former chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board, who knows where the money is buried. Red rag to a bull. The board want nothing to do with Halbish and accuse Erskine of making a takeover bid. Erskine's plan, guaranteeing to make the board more than £150 million over the next five years, which would give the players what they want and leave a handsome profit, was turned down even though he guaranteed the income without any risk to the authorities. The board said they could do better. Erskine says if that is the case why did the board refuse the players' pay demands?

The players and the board will meet later this week. Given the cricketers have said they won't strike - for the moment at least - it is to be hoped the board appreciate the gesture and concede that in the last analysis they are on the same side as the players. They should employ Erskine to negotiate the next television contract. One of the men they will be dealing with is Kerry Packer. They are going to need all the help they can get.

ON a day so perfect not even the locals took it for granted, I sat with Dickie Bird eating fish and chips while looking at the Sydney skyline and telling each other it was a long way from Barnsley. Mr Bird is now a best-selling author. His publishers report sales of near on 200,000 copies of his autobiography and he is in Australia trying to sell more. Unfortunately, he is not feeling too well. He went to see a doctor, who took one look at his publicity schedule and told him it would exhaust a pit pony, never mind a 64-year-old umpire with a fretful disposition. He advised Dickie to cancel the rest of his tour and take a rest. Hence our visit to the chip shop.

Actually, to call Doyles a chippie is a bit like saying Lord's is merely a cricket stadium, or the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. It misses the point. Doyles is to the serving of fish and chips what Dickie Bird is to umpiring - something of an institution. It is tucked into a bay on a beach where, during Mike Gatting's successful tour of Australia the England team entertained the diners with an impromptu game of cricket. The highlight, as I recall, was David Gower fielding in the sea at square leg, taking a remarkable catch with one hand while holding a glass of champagne in the other. That was David's idea of serious practice.

Mr Bird was offered a prime table befitting his status as one of the few Englishmen truly beloved by Aussies. A man I had never seen before approached our table and said to me: "I saw that friend of yours on television the other day. What a character." I asked him who he meant. "That Dickie Bird. He's a rum bugger," he said. "Why don't you tell him yourself?" I said, indicating Mr Bird, who sat there thinking he must have turned invisible. The man looked at Dickie and reeled away as if confronted by an apparition. "Do you think he was from Yorkshire?" asked Dickie, who can't imagine he is recognised by anyone living outside a 20-mile radius of Oakwell.

He has already been visited by Dennis Lillee and Merv Hughes, neither renowned for untoward displays of affection towards umpires. Dickie thinks Lillee is the best fast bowler of them all, an opinion which brought him into direct conflict with Fred Trueman, who told Dickie he could bowl better than the Australian off a five-pace run-up. It is believed Dickie's omission of Boycott from his world XI was one of the main reasons why Geoff left Yorkshire and went to live near Bournemouth.

In a couple of days' time we are going to visit another of our heroes, Keith Miller. By which time Britain's best-selling author might be fit enough to return home. Although watching Barnsley in the Premiership - Saturday's result not withstanding - might set him back a bit. He has another cricket season ahead and then his career is finished. He will become one of the game's legends. He is already, I suppose. For all his wittering and worrying, he is a satisfied man, except for one unfulfilled ambition. He was never awarded his Yorkshire cap. If they gave him one, he would never take it off. Wouldn't it be the perfect gesture for his native county to make next season? It would literally be the crowning moment of his career.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)