Greg Chappell

[harsh.ag]

Cricinfo Interview excerpts:

Strangest player you played with?

Greg Matthews came into the Australian side during my last season. He was just different to any other cricketer I played with. He came from a different background, spoke a different language, a surfie's language. "Bro", "cool" being a major part of his language. He didn't meet the stereotype of what an Australian cricketer looked like, spoke like, sounded like. And yet he had a love of the game that was as strong as anyone I ever played with or against.

Who was the fastest, Jeff Thomson or Michael Holding?

Jeff Thomson by a considerable amount. Even Michael Holding admitted it. I remember someone asking him a similar question at a function and he said, we were all quick on our day and then there was Jeff Thomson.
There was one other difference between Thommo and Michael. Michael, because of his classical action, you saw the ball the whole way. He put it out in front of you before, and as he delivered it. Thommo stuck it behind his back and you didn't sight it until, all of a sudden, it appeared out of his hand.

What happened to Bob Massie? With him at his best and those two quicks, Australia would have been unbeatable.

Sixteen wickets on his Test debut was the worst thing that happened to Bob. He felt the pressure, thought he had to take 16 wickets every time he bowled. And he started trying to really make it swing, whereas at Lord's in that game, he just ran up, bowled, and it swung. At Trent Bridge on the 1972 tour there was another innings where he bowled beautifully.
After that, he lost his swing, and once he lost his swing, he lost confidence and lost everything. We went to the West Indies in 1973 and they were pretty benign wickets. The ball was totally shagged after about 20 overs. He was trying to make it swing and it wouldn't swing. He lost his rhythm. A little bit like a golfer who tries to change his swing to get a bit of extra distance and loses his timing and never gets it back. That was Bob, unfortunately.

 

[watson]

I have always thought that Christmas Eve 1976 is one of the saddest days in modern cricket because it's when Jeff Thomson collided with Alan Turner and shredded the tendons in his bowling shoulder. It would have been nice to watch him bowl a 100 mph for a few years more and perhaps go down as the greatest fast bowler of all time.

What is not as well known is that Thomo's flatmate was killed the year before after being hit over the heart by a short delivery.

Add the two events together and they explain why Thomson was never the same after that huge 74-76 peak.

Jeff Thomson is Annoyed

....He will bowl many more fast spells. But on December 13, 1975, something - something inside, and barely traceable - changes. A flatmate of Thomson's, 22-year-old wicketkeeper Martin Bedkober, is batting in a Brisbane grade match. He lets a short ball hit his chest. The bowler is a medium-pacer. Bedkober waves help away, then falls. Not long after, he is dead: a blood clot, in the spot where the ball struck, the hospital doctor cannot push oxygen through.

Thomson will think, after this, "There's no point trying to knock a bloke out."

On the afternoon before Christmas, 1976, Pakistan's Zaheer Abbas spoons up an attempted pull shot in Adelaide. The bowler Thomson dives for the catch, midwicket Alan Turner dives simultaneously, and they crash. Neither man gets up for a while - and Thomson's right shoulder bone is wrenched five centimetres away from the joint. He will bowl again in his life, many times, but with a longer run-up, and without the same serene elasticity in the moment before delivery. Seldom will a ball, neither full nor short, leap with the steep menace of old.

First, his psyche; a year after, his shoulder. He is reduced, cut down - this man who on the last day of 1973 bowled faster probably than anyone in the universe ever has, and faster, perhaps, than the universe wanted him to bowl.

Wisden - Jeff Thomson is annoyed

Anyway, back to Greg Chappell.

 

[vcs]

I have always thought that Christmas Eve 1976 is one of the saddest days in modern cricket because it's when Jeff Thomson collided with Alan Turner and shredded the tendons in his bowling shoulder. It would have been nice to watch him bowl a 100 mph for a few years more and perhaps go down as the greatest fast bowler of all time.

What is not as well known is that Thomo's flatmate was killed the year before after being hit over the heart by a short delivery.

Add the two events together and they explain why Thomson was never the same after that huge 74-76 peak.

That's one of my favourite cricket-related articles.

 

[Burgey]

Such a good article. Imagine how terrifying facing someone like him would have been. It's a sickening feeling when you face someone who's just too quick. There's so much fear involved, it completely ****s with your head. To do that to really, really good players is truly terrifying.