Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

in the season’s last two matches. The selectors, reflected long-term chairman Allan Edwards, had a high regard for Ric’s leadership qualities of guts, determination and commitment to fostering team spirit, all of them exemplified by his inspirational fielding. Edwards also recalled that on one occasion those spirited qualities were revealed in Ric’s anger at not being consulted as captain by the selectors before the team was decided, as was the normal procedure. In retrospect Edwards conceded that the complaint had been justified. Although Ric’s own scores were modest, victories against Queensland and South Australia at the WACA ground meant the team had finished the season on a more positive note – following the three first-class draws and one defeat before Christmas – taking it to second place behind Victoria. In both matches he had led a side that included current Test players Wood and Hughes, just weeks before Hughes was to captain Australia for the first time against Pakistan. But Ric ended that season without any certainty he would ever captain the side again, thanks to the imminent reconciliation between the Australian Cricket Board [ACB] and Packer’s WSC. * * * * * Kim Hughes’ first match as Test captain in late March came just weeks before a peace settlement was made between the ACB and WSC in April 1979. Later that year he went on to lead Australia to four Test draws and two defeats in India, with a team made up entirely of ACB loyalists. But many people expected conflict between players who had taken different sides, when the ‘rebels’ returned to domestic cricket for the 1979/80 season. Certainly, there remained great resentment in many traditional circles, not least the governing hierarchy of the WACA, which had waged an expensive and unsuccessful legal battle with Dennis Lillee over the attempt to ban him from playing grade cricket. Some of that anger was directed against the ACB, which the previous July had made a compromise with WSC that undermined the WACA’s position, a decision that emphasised Western Australia’s continuing junior status in national cricket. Despite its recent domination of the Shield and despite the state’s ever-widening superiority in population size and economic wealth, it continued to have only two representatives on the ACB, while South Australia retained the 1976-1981 41