Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

125 Towards Classless Cricket? Test and one-day international receipts, plus substantive local ventures into club sponsorship, all-year-round catering and advertising. Two other changes must be recorded, one little and parochial, the other large and global. In 1967 the (Professional) Cricketers’ Association was established with Fred Rumsey of Somerset and Jack Bannister of Warwickshire the early key leaders. Within a few years most county cricketers had become members and among one or two other gains, it persuaded the counties to agree to a minimum wage and found itself sitting on relevant national committees. 4 The paternalism of the upper and middle class MCC and county authorities and the deference, even, one might add, the fear of victimisation, of the working class employees had delayed such an enterprise for generations. It was a further aspect of the perception of cricket as somehow rarefied, not to be tainted by ordinary criteria. Even in 1967 some on both sides of the divide were shocked by the concept. One has noted that this same anxiety about any sort of unionism was evident in some charities where the lofty tone of the rationale rendered anything so contentious as staff negotiation sordid. It was like having a trade union for vicars. Fears of likely militancy were soon proved bootless. TCCB funding, initially £20,000 annually, queered the partisan pitch immediately. Imagine the National Coal Board coughing up for Arthur Scargill’s salary in the 1980s. That entwining of interests apart, the whole venture had more the character of a staff association or a professional body and not that of a trade union that might contemplate affiliating to the Trade Union Congress. That is not a criticism of the PCA which has achieved several beneficial results for its members. This is an observation about its nature. It was more the British Dental Association than the Boiler-makers Union – and that was of a piece with the prevailing middle class nature of its members which will the chief theme of the following chapter. This was a tremor compared with the earthquake triggered by Kerry Packer in 1977. 5 Apart from raising the tempo, financing and design, inclusive of the use of coloured clothing, of limited overs international cricket, the well-known Packer saga scratched at a sore on the body of cricket that no one had hitherto thought or dared to tamper with. Mr Justice Slade in the High Court declared that the ICC and TCCB ban on Packer-contracted players was unreasonable restraint of trade. What for the best part of a hundred years had been common employment practice was illegal. What had been fairly obvious but never before subjected to a legal challenge was shown to be wrong. The ramifications were enormous. In a phrase, English cricketers, national and county, were from now on in employment rather than in service, with carefully constructed contracts not feudalistic obligations. Even recently counties have found it necessary to offer players a year-round contract and salary because of moves to poach their staffs for overseas winter cricketing outside their control. It was akin to the freeing of the football labour force. In 1960/61 the