How WICBC victimised Kallicharan

Because the documentary Branded a Rebel shown on local television on March 9 is subtitled Cricket’s Forgotten Men, one thinks it expedient to recall that golden moment of Kali on June 14, 1975, when the diminutive, 5’ 4” boyish-looking batsman faced up to the 5’ 11” Dennis Lillee in a cricket moment that had all the reminiscences of the gladiatorial battle of David and Goliath of Biblical times.

In ten balls of fire and brimstone, Lillee, the first bionic, scientifically reincarnated cricketer was hurling his thunderbolts as if he were really the Perth Express in a hurry, while Kallicharan responded proverbially by fighting fire with fire, as he blasted away: 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 6, 0, 4, to reduce the fastest and most feared bowler at the time to dust in the wind, as Kali made confetti of those ten balls scattering them to all parts of the ground.

In World Cup history, that moment remains indelible to all lovers of the game. It was that seminal moment which very likely gave birth to the idea of today’s 20/20 game and of batsmen playing Test cricket as if it were limited over’s cricket.

And so we fast forward the game to 1977 when Australian media magnate Kerry Packer would make an 18 month raid on the game inducing most of the world’s best players to desert the established corridors of cricket to play for his World Series Cricket (WSC).

WSC was created by Packer because of his failed bid to secure cricket broadcasting rights for his Channel Nine Network and more ostensibly, he argued, because cricketers were not being paid enough to make a living from the game.

Hiring Tony Grieg as his recruitment agent, Packer was able to hire most of the best cricketers in the world — from Australia, England, West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand.

One cricketer who initially signed with Packer but would eventually withdraw was Alvin Kallicharan. Kali’s son Rohan (and Gavaskar’s) obviously named after the great Kanhai, would later explain that his father’s withdrawal from Packer’s “rebels” was because Warwickshire, his English County team threatened to withdraw their support of his application for British citizenship.

David Lord, Kalli’s own adviser on the Packer issue also advised against him associating with WSC as there was the threat of a ban on those “rebels” by their countries’ respective Boards.

So while Lloyd and Richards and their band surrendered to Packer’s, Kallicharan stayed back in the Caribbean to eventually be made captain of a weakened West Indies team between 1977 and 1979.

At the end of the WSC extravaganza in 1979, all the “rebel” cricketers and having played against apartheid’s white South African cricketers — returned to their respective countries  — to not only escape any repercussion — but to be practically given a prodigal son kind of welcome: Lloyd, for instance, was reinstated as WI captain as Kalli was demoted to just a regular player on the team.

Who dares wins, underpinned the existential philosophy of the time, it seemed. Rohan Kallicharan admits that afterwards his father’s form dipped and when the WI team was selected to tour Australia in 1981 not only was he dropped but he who had played 66 Tests, scoring 4,399 runs at an average of 44.43, was not personally informed. Rohan adds that although Lloyd knew his father was dropped and although both played in a county match that week — with Kalli showing a return to form — he did not personally tell him.

With the success of Packer’s raid on official cricketdom, the South Africans now undertook a similar course of action. Not quite as successful as Packer, but still being able to attract quality players from the cricketing capitals of the world, the South African rebel tournament got underway.

It’s hard to say for sure, and the documentary did not explore in any intellectual depth why Kalli (who was already out in the cold) and the others accepted the South African offer considering the whole question of apartheid.

Was it because the WSC “rebels” got off without a slap on the wrist as was threatened them, and that their own quest for cricket’s bounty would end up as rewarding?

Did anybody consider they were young, lost souls who did not understand the full ramifications of their actions, of apartheid? And wasn’t the three year English ban more rational than our life sentence?