Tour of England 1977              Captain: Greg Chappell

39th Australian Test tour

27th Test-playing tour of England by Australia

(February - April 1999)

As the players were gathering in Sydney for their flight to England, approaches were still being made with offers to play in Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket the following winter. Being sworn to secrecy, no-one knew who else had signed and the tour management had no inkling of what was going on.  Thirteen members of the touring team had signed three-year contracts with the Packer organisation for the series of games between Australia and a World XI starting in Australia next November.  The only tourists not signed in the 17-man tour group were batsmen Gary Cosier, Kim Hughes and Craig Serjeant and left-arm bowler Geoff Dymock.

England's 3-0 victory regained the Ashes but the Australians were the cause of their own downfall. Most of the players were very young and inexperienced, and Greg Chappell was still in the early days of his Test captaincy. Apart from himself and Marsh, no-one else was a certainty for the Test side. There was a distance between him and the ranks and he was isolated from the problems of the junior players.  Accusations that the Test sides were picked along the lines of who had signed with Packer (such as when Serjeant was omitted for Robinson in the 3rd Test) were strongly rebuffed but the Packer affair hung over the camp throughout the tour.

Other Australian Tours

Previous tour

New Zealand 1976-77

Next tour

West Indies 1977-78

Next tour of England

1980   

Members of the Test tour party  (17)

Opening batsmen:  Ian Davis, Rick McCosker,

Middle-order batsmen:  Greg Chappell, Gary Cosier, David Hookes, Kim Hughes, Craig Serjeant, Doug Walters

Wicket-keepers:  Rodney Marsh, Richie Robinson

Spin bowlers:  Ray Bright, Kerry O’Keefe

Fast bowlers: Geoff Dymock, Mick Malone, Len Pascoe, Jeff Thomson, Max Walker

State representation

  Sheffield Shield teams

NSW   New South Wales (5)

Qld  Queensland (3)

SA   South Australia (2)

Tas  Tasmania (0)

Vic   Victoria (3)

WA  Western Australia (4)

Average age of  team at time of first Test match

(16 June 1977) :

   27 yrs  1 month

ODI

Test Appearances made before the tour

Walters 62,  Marsh 47,  GS Chappell 46,  Walker 27,  O'Keefe 20,  McCosker 17,  Thomson 17,  Cosier 10,  Davis 9,  Dymock 4,  Hookes 1,  Bright 0,  Hughes 0,  Malone 0,  Pascoe o,  Robinson 0,  Serjeant 0.

Tour Officials

Selectors

Neil Harvey (NSW),   Sam Loxton (Victoria),   Phil Ridings (South Australia, chairman).

Selection

Unavailable: Dennis Lillee (recovering from stress fractures in back)

Tour Party Announced :  17 March 1977.

Not selected : Gary Gilmour (Geoff Dymock was preferred);  Alan Turner .

The selectors chose only two opening batsmen, one of whom was McCosker whose jaw had been broken in the Centenary Test. "Chappell wanted the selectors to give him another experienced batsman to balance a line-up he felt too full of younger stroke-making players, but he was ignored." (David Fulton 'The Captain's Tales' 2009) 

Much depended on Jeff Thomson in Lillee’s absence but he had not played a first-class match since his dislocated shoulder last December.

Time between selection and departure from Australia         

        35 days

(17 March  -21 April)

Travel

Sydney   Q  London

On 19 April 1977 the Victorian players flew from Tullamarine airport to Sydney where the tour party gathered. The team’s Qantas Boeing took off from Mascot Airport, Sydney, on 21 April  and flew via Singapore and Bahrain

The Age newspaper carried a story about the drinking competition to while away the long journey, during which Doug Walters consumed 44 cans on a 29-hour flight

The plane landed at London’s Heathrow Airport  on Friday 22 April and a press conference was held at the Waldorf Hotel later that morning

.

McCosker, after having an operation on his jaw, joined the tour later.  Both he and Thomson had been selected subject to a special fitness test. McCosker arrived on 15 May having been further delayed on his journey by an air traffic controllers' strike.

Time spent in England

   131 days

(22 April - 31 August)

On-tour selection

Greg Chappell  (captain),  Rodney Marsh  (vice-captain),  Doug Walters.

Reinforcements

None.   When news of World Series Cricket broke, the Secretary of the Australian Cricket Board stated that none of the thirteen who had signed for Packer would be recalled, because they had tour contracts.

O'Keefe was captain in the match at Sunderland.

Fixtures/Results

† not first-class

§  one-day international

Time spent in England before First Test: 

  55 days

(22 April - 16 June)

Test appearances on tour

5   -   Chappell,  Hookes,  McCosker,  Marsh,  Thomson,  Walker,  Walters.

3   -   Bright,  Davis,  O’Keefe,  Pascoe,  Robinson,  Serjeant.

1   -   Hughes,  Malone.

0 -     Cosier,  Dymock.

Highlights

•   M

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Tour Summary

Return to Australia

London   Q  Sydney

Five of the tourists had holidays in Europe or America before the new season in Australia, but the rest of the team flew from London to Sydney on 31 August 1977.

Chappell, Bright, Davis and Marsh played a weekend match in Holland before leaving

Time away from Australia

  134 days  

(21 April to 2 September)

Finances

…..

Written accounts of the tour

"The Return of the Ashes"  (1977)   by Mike Brearley & Dudley Doust [Pelham Books]

"The Ashes 77"  (1977)  by Greg Chappell & David Frith [Harper Collins]

"The Jubilee Tests"  (1977)  by Christopher Martin-Jenkins [Macdonald & Janes]

"A Game Divided"   (1978)  by Peter MacFarline  [Hutchinson]

“The Jubilee Test series 1977"  (1977)  by  Frank Tyson and Neil Phillipson  [Pelham Books]

"Frindall's Scorebook: Jubilee Edition"  (1977)  by Bill Frindall [Lonsdale Press]

Postscript