By Pelham Juriansz
Rebel tours and rebel series have been around for quite some time. Rebelling is nothing new. Ever since the first rebel Lucifer, rebelled against God Almighty it has been fashionable to rebel against authority and question authority. But with the recent hue and cry over the Indian rebel series which retired players like Brian Lara, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath (the latter two have denied being involved) there is much furore over the idea of rebels and rebel tours and series.
Let us analyse some of the problems involved. Well as the good old saying goes, ‘Love of money is the root of all evil’. But then is the love of money all that is at stake here? After all if you take the Sri Lankan scene the three players who are being considered are two players whose careers are almost over and one retired player.
Take further the fact that Marvan Atapattu was meted out step-motherly treatment by the selectors during the World Cup is it wrong to now point fingers at him? When a player like Upul Tharanga was failing so badly was it not right to give the former skipper who has contributed so much to Sri Lankan cricket a go in the middle, instead of merely relegating him to the position of ‘drinks boy’?
Packer and the WSC
Rebel series started when Australian Kerry Packer decided that ‘enough was enough’. The cricketers were getting ‘peanuts’ compared to other sportspersons in the 1970’s. So began the World Series Cricket where Packer hired the VFL Park in Melbourne to host the Series and also telecast the matches on his Channel 9 TV.
Taking advantage of the low remuneration paid to players, Packer retaliated by signing several of the best players in the world to a privately run cricket league outside the structure of international cricket
World Series Cricket hired some of the banned South African players and allowed them to show off their skills in an international arena against other world-class players.
I remember watching WSC in Australia in 1979 and wasn’t I in 7th Heaven! It was a great opportunity to watch players of the calibre of Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Eddie Barlow, who had hitherto been banned from international cricket because of the Apartheid problem that existed in South Africa at the time.
In fact for 21 long years the South Africans were unable to participate in the Test Arena and we the cricket enthusiasts were denied watching some of the best players in the World. Kerry Packer with his ‘pyjama’ cricket played in the night, changed all that.
The schism that the World series created with established Cricket, lasted only until 1979 and the “rebel” players were allowed back into established international cricket, though many found that their national teams had moved on without them. Long-term results of World Series Cricket have included the introduction of significantly higher player salaries and innovations such as coloured kit and night games.
Limited overs cricket
In the 1960s, English county teams began playing a version of cricket with games of only one innings each and a maximum number of overs per innings. Starting in 1963 as a knockout competition only, limited overs grew in popularity and in 1969 a national league was created which consequently caused a reduction in the number of matches in the County Championship.
Although many “traditional” cricket fans objected to the shorter form of the game, limited overs cricket did have the advantage of delivering a result to spectators within a single day; it did improve cricket’s appeal to younger or busier people; and it did prove commercially successful.
The first limited overs international match took place at the MCG in 1971 as a time-filler after a Test match had been abandoned because of heavy rain on the opening days. It was tried simply as an experiment and to give the players some exercise, but turned out to be immensely popular. Limited Over Internationals (LOIs or ODIs, after One-day Internationals) have since grown to become a massively popular form of the game, especially for busy people who want to be able to see a whole match.
The International Cricket Council reacted to this development by organising the first Cricket World Cup in England in 1975, with all the Test playing nations taking part.
Cricketers’ future
on the line
But how does all this affect our tiny island? The Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) Interim Committee (at the time of typing) will take a decision as to what action could be taken in connection with the players who are set to play in the highly controversial Indian Cricket League (ICL) Twenty20 tournament which has already taken the cricketing World by storm.
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