Tony Greig: An innings as captain, rebel and a good man Greig had grown up in South Africa. At the height of apartheid here was a white man from the Eastern Cape using the emotive word "grovel" about black men. Many English cricket fans were appalled. Greig was already deemed something of an outsider. Born to a Scottish immigrant father he was educated at Queen's College, Queenstown, Eastern Cape, and gained a trial for Sussex aged 19, thanks to a series of former players for the county coaching at the school, while his father's British birth made him eligible for England. In the wake of the "grovel" comments, fans reasoned that no true Englishman would say such a thing. As for Greig's own players, several of them were appalled too. After all, they had a strong vested interest in staying intact. The last thing they needed, some of them privately concluded, was West Indian quick bowlers with a score to settle. It was not the first time Greig had wound up opposing players. In Brisbane, during England's 1974-75 tour of Australia while compiling a fine hundred, he had signalled his own boundaries off the fast and increasingly furious Dennis Lillee. "Please don't make him mad," pleaded Greig's team mate Derek Underwood, waiting to face Lillee at the other end. But it wasn't just showmanship, it was also tactical. Greig knew if he could make Lillee cross, the great bowler might lose his control. It seems likely that Greig had the same plan in mind for the West Indians. But if so, it backfired. It was not hard to construe the "grovel" comment as racist and West Indians - not least in Britain's inner cities, where there was already escalating racial tension - did just that. Greig quickly apologised for his intemperate words, but the situation was really defused by events on the field of play, where the West Indies cricketers made Greig's threat look more than a little ridiculous. They ended up winning the Test series 3-0, and bowled more quickly and nastily every time the captain came to the crease. He did manage to muster the second-highest score in the first innings of the third Test at Old Trafford, but it was a mere nine runs, in a total of just 71, as the fiery young Jamaican, Michael Holding, took England apart. The tone was set for the rest of the series. "We resolved to show him and everyone else that the days for grovelling were over," the West Indies captain, Clive Lloyd, later recalled. It remains a most dubious claim to fame for Greig that he delivered one of the greatest motivational speeches in sporting history, entirely to the benefit of the opposition. The England cricket team has had better captains, but few more combative or charismatic. Nor have there been many, if any, innings of greater character than the one he played, while suffering from a raging fever, against India in Calcutta in January 1977. Over the course of more than seven hours, Greig painstakingly scored 103 from 347 deliveries in the most challenging, intimidating conditions imaginable. His innings effectively won the match for England, who went on to secure the series. Barely eight months after the most regrettable episode of his career, had come the most heroic. Little though anyone knew it in the immediate wake of his innings in Calcutta, Greig's days as England captain and as a Test cricketer were numbered. The Australian media mogul Kerry Packer was already plotting a revolution against the cricketing establishment and had identified Greig as the perfect man to lead it. In early 1977, on Packer's behalf, Greig tempted some of the world's best players to join what the British media disapprovingly called the "Packer circus." Its real name was World Series Cricket, and it convulsed the game. Ultimately, the convulsions would benefit cricket. Packer's revolution professionalised a sport that was still in many ways constricted by an amateur ethos. It show cased one-day cricket, and introduced coloured clothing and day-night matches, giving the game a modern new image. The old-timers at Lord's, however, angrily branded Greig a traitor and he was more or less ostracised by the very establishment that had applauded his exploits in India just a few months earlier. Some of them thought him beyond redemption, but at Lord's just six months ago he delivered the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture, as clear a sign that his perceived transgressions were fully forgiven. Boldly, he used that speech to explain why he sacrificed "the most coveted role in world cricket, the England captaincy," to become involved with Packer. With characteristic candour, he admitted that he did it in large measure for financial reasons and the guarantee of a job for life with Packer's Channel Nine organisation. But he also did it because he thought it would, transform the game he loved for the better. And so it did. Nobody at that lecture could have known that chunks of it would act, quite so soon, as Greig's epitaph. But perhaps an even better one was supplied by Holding, the man who ripped England to shreds at Old Trafford. He had come to regard Greig as a friend and did not believe there had been genuine racist undertones to talk about making the West Indies grovel. He had just used the wrong word. "I think that because of his upbringing and background, that word just popped into his mind," he said. I don't think he meant it as derogatory. At the end of the series when the West Indian supporters at the Oval shouted 'grovel, Greigy, grovel," he got down on his knees and took the last few steps into the pavilion on his knees. If he had meant it to be racist, he wouldn't have done that. Of course, we were totally against him as a team in 1976, but later I came to know him very well. When I was in Australia he would invite me to his home. He was a good friend, a good man. Brian Viner is the author of Ali, Pele, Lillee & Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies (Simon & Schuster, £6.99)