World Series Cricket - The Rapprochement

The Rapprochement

By 1979, the ACB was in desperate financial straits and faced the prospect of fighting an opponent who had seemingly bottomless cash resources. In two seasons, the combined losses of the two biggest cricket associations, New South Wales and Victoria, totalled more than half a million dollars. However, Packer too was feeling the financial pinch – many years later, WSC insiders claimed that the losses he incurred were very much higher than the amounts quoted at the time. During March of that year, Packer instigated a series of meetings with then chairman of the ACB board, Bob Parish, which hammered out an agreement on the future of Australian cricket.

When Parish announced the truce on 30 May 1979, a surprise was in store for followers of the game. Not only had Channel Nine won the exclusive rights to telecast Australian cricket, it was granted a ten-year contract to promote and market the game through a new company, PBL Marketing. The ACB capitulation infuriated the English authorities and the ICC as they had provided much in the way of financial and moral support to the ACB, which now appeared to have sold out to Packer. According to the 1980 issue of Wisden:

The feeling in many quarters was that when the Australian Board first found Packer at their throats, the rest of the cricket world supported them to the hilt; even to the extent of highly expensive court cases which cricket could ill afford. Now, when it suited Australia, they had brushed their friends aside to meet their own ends.

The WSC Australian players (on tour in the West Indies at the time) had no input into the negotiations. This left some disillusioned and apprehensive that they would suffer discrimination from the ACB in the coming years. The ACB opted to not select WSC-contracted players for the tours of England (for the 1979 World Cup) and India (for six Tests) later in the year. Both tours produced sub-standard Australian performances, and both were led by Kim Hughes.

For the 1979–80 season, Greg Chappell was restored as Australian captain and the team contained an even mixture of WSC and non-WSC players. The season's schedule mimicked the WSC format. England and the West Indies toured, playing three Tests each against Australia, with a triangular one-day tournament (the World Series Cup) interspersed among the Tests. Australia's results were mixed: in the Test matches, they defeated England 3–0 (having lost 5–1 to the same opponents the previous summer) but lost 0–2 to the West Indies, and they failed to make the final of the one-day tournament. The format of the season received heavy criticism, but still made a healthy profit, much of which went to PBL rather than the ACB.