Double Headers

130 10: A final batch of near misses The biggest of them all Of all the near-misses recorded in these pages, none were as significant, or as deliberate, as four that took place in Australia in the 1977/78 season, when Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket teams were playing in Australia at the same time as the official, much weakened, Australian Test team was playing a five-match home series against India. In an effort to attract crowds away from the official games, four of the WSC SuperTests were quite deliberately programmed to coincide with four of the official Test matches - although Mr Packer’s rivalry (or business sense) never took him as far as staging his games in the same city as the official Tests. The plan was not a success, as the SuperTest crowds were not all that Mr Packer might have hoped: “WSC’s decision to hold their SuperTests on the same dates as the official Test Matches was harmful to their cause, and was another example of their over-confidence”. 103 By all accounts the SuperTests were first-class in everything but name, but the fact remains that they are not, and surely never will be, included in the canon of first-class matches, because they were not sanctioned by the official governing body of cricket in the country where they were played. That being so, simultaneous fixtures involving Australia in one match, and WSC Australia in the other, cannot be classed as bona fide double-headers. Nevertheless, as noted, during that first season of WSC cricket there were four such coincidences at ‘Test level’. Moreover, during each of the four instances, a three-day fixture was also taking place between other teams of Packer’s players in the WSC Country Cup, in each case, between sides named WSC Australia and WSC World XI. These were two-innings-per-side matches, but the length of each innings was limited – the first innings to 40 (eight-ball) overs per side, and the second innings to 75 overs; there were also restrictions on the number of overs that individual bowlers could bowl in each innings. Whether, in other circumstances, these games might have qualified as ‘first-class’ is an open question, but I see no reason why they could not have done. 104 If these games, as well as the SuperTests, had been regarded as first-class, there would have been four bona fide double-headers in the 1977/78 103 Henry Blofeld: The Packer Affair , Collins, 1978, page 141. 104 Many first-class competitions around the world have imposed limits on the number of overs bowled in each first innings – for example, the County Championship in 1966 (some matches) and 1974-1980 (all matches), and the ‘second tier’ first-class competition in South Africa between 2004/05 and 2010/11. However, none that I am aware of have imposed comparable limits on the second innings as well, nor have they limited the number of overs allowed to each bowler. But there is nothing in the official definition of a first- class match which would automatically preclude games played under these conditions from being accorded first-class status. As for the standard of the games in Australia in 1977/78, in all four cases being considered here the WSC Australia sides in the SuperTests were close to the country’s strongest possible XIs, while either nine or ten of the WSC Australia sides in the Country Cup matches were, or would become, (official) Test cricketers; and the opposing West Indies and World XIs were pretty much their full-strength SuperTest sides, except in the fourth match when the World XI’s senior players were involved in the SuperTest at Perth. It surely could not be claimed that any of these WSC sides was not up to ‘first-class strength’.