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Thread: Tony Grieg Dies

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    resident moaning git DaveF's Avatar
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    Tony Grieg Dies

    Ex England captain is dead aged 66. Quite a controversial character, especially his comments about the west indies and making them grovel when they arrived in England in 1976.


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    Quote Originally Posted by DaveF View Post
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    Ex England captain is dead aged 66. Quite a controversial character, especially his comments about the west indies and making them grovel when they arrived in England in 1976.
    Aye - that didn't half come back to bite him.

    On the other hand, he figured prominently in setting up World Series cricket with Kerry Packer in the 1970's, which basically brought the game out of the 1920's and into the modern era.

    Anyone who doesn't remember the time before Packer really can't take in just how far the game has developed since then. Anyone who was associated with Packer was vilified at the time, including Grieg, but Packer led a massive re-working of the sport and a lot of what makes the game viable as a TV and media spectacle today goes back to him and the guys who worked with him, especially Greig. To walk away from the England captaincy to support an Aussie media tycoon with a dodgy reputation took guts - even if he was well-paid for doing so.

    He was arguably as good an all-rounder as Botham and Flintoff - in 58 Tests he score 3,599 runs at 40, and took 141 wickets at 32. He would certainly have played a lot more Tests if he had stayed around. Botham's figures are 5,200 runs at 33 and 383 wickets at 28; Flintoff's 3,845 runs at 31 and 226 wickets at 32. Both played longer and in more Tests than Greig. And he was a much better team captain than either of them IMO.

    He was confrontational - I remember a Test at the Gabba where he made a century that included many boundaries off Dennis Lillee. Grieg signalled every one of them himself, which wound Lillee up and made him lose his concentration - and his line and length. The Aussie crowd was howling for his blood, Underwood at the other end was begging him to stop ("Please don't make him mad ..."), but it was one of the very few occasions an English captain gave as good as he got to Lillee and the Gabba crowd. The fact that he later moved permanantly to Oz and became and Australian citizen says it all, really.

    I think it was his SA accent that made the "grovel" comment sound so bad; my gut feeling is that it was a pre-emptive bit of sledging gone disastrously wrong. Far worse things have been said on the cricket field during matches, that's for sure. If there WAS a racist element to it (and given the attitudes of the time I suppose there was) the Windies didn't half make him pay for it that summer.

    He was a good cricketer and a good commentator in later years. The heart attack might have been a blessing in disguise, I think.

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    resident moaning git DaveF's Avatar
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    Well said Doddie. He did indeed do a hell of a lot to bring the game into the modern era and I never actually realised his stats were as good as there were.

    Pretty sure that I read an article on that 'grovel' comment and it said Grieg actually got down on his knees to grovel in front of the Windies fans near the end of that series as a sort of of 'I screwed up' gesture so even though he was tough man with a tough reputation he also had a wry sense of wit.

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    @hibs.net private member Stonewall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DaveF View Post
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    Well said Doddie. He did indeed do a hell of a lot to bring the game into the modern era and I never actually realised his stats were as good as there were.

    Pretty sure that I read an article on that 'grovel' comment and it said Grieg actually got down on his knees to grovel in front of the Windies fans near the end of that series as a sort of of 'I screwed up' gesture so even though he was tough man with a tough reputation he also had a wry sense of wit.
    He certainly did Dave, I remember it well. I listened to an interview he did last year with Jonathan Agnew and he himself said he couldn't quite believe he'd made the grovel comment and regretted it. He was always a wind-up merchant and a bit prone to running his mouth (I remember a post match interview when he asked the Pakistan captain if he was going for a few beers after the game) but that shouldn't detract from all his achievements.

    I don't believe there was any malice in him, it was all part of what made him such a wonderfully combative an compelling cricketer.

    His dad was Scottish too.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stonewall View Post
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    He certainly did Dave, I remember it well. I listened to an interview he did last year with Jonathan Agnew and he himself said he couldn't quite believe he'd made the grovel comment and regretted it. He was always a wind-up merchant and a bit prone to running his mouth (I remember a post match interview when he asked the Pakistan captain if he was going for a few beers after the game) but that shouldn't detract from all his achievements.

    I don't believe there was any malice in him, it was all part of what made him such a wonderfully combative an compelling cricketer.

    His dad was Scottish too.

    Greig's father was a Scot stationed in SA with the RAF who married a local girl and stayed on. Greig went to school in Scotland - Loretto, in Musselburgh (VERY posh).

    Greig, of course, was one of three Scots who captained the England cricket team - Greig, Mike Denness, and the celebrated and much revered (especially around the Gabba and the MCG) D R Jardine.

    Greig and Jardine were Scots by blood -

    Jardine was born in India in the days of the Empire to Scots parents. (I'm always surprised that the MCC didn't make more of this fact in 1933 - "It wasn't our fault Jardine had them bowling bodyline - what do you expect from a ****** Scotsman?.")

    Mike Denness was born in Bellshill. He said he once received a letter addressed to "Mike Denness, Cricketer" which read "If the Post Office manages to deliver this to you, they obviously have a much higher opinion of your abilities than I do."

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