What if the ‘Packers’ circus’ which caused tension to the cricket boards by making the cricketers to rebel directly?

If you were a cricket lover of 80s-90s, then you would never have seen before that in ODI and T20 cricket playing cricket with red ball in white as in Test cricket. However, cricket got to see this modern form 43 years ago i.e. in 1977 through a rebel series. The series was called a ‘circus’ by John Arlott, the best cricket commentator.

The Bundmore Series is the Cary Packers’ “World Series.” This world series cricket was introduced to the world today i.e. 9th May in the form of headline ‘Turned Pirates’ in Daily Mail newspaper. This series of cricket had worried all the cricket boards of the world.

Let’s know, exactly why all the cricket boards of the world were nervous because of this series?

Interestingly, the rise of this World Series was due to the spirit of revenge. Packers owns Australia’s largest TV channel ‘Channel-9’. So he requested the Australian Cricket Board to give him the right to show his Test matches live, but the board refused him. So the Packers decided to start their own cricket and started their cricket called World Series Cricket.

Packers decided to play cricket matches under floodlights at night to make their cricket more exciting. However, the biggest problem they faced was the absence of flood lights in the cricket stadium. The Packers then leased a football stadium and began playing games with an artificial pitch on it.

It was for the first time that cricketers were playing cricket under artificial light at night. Accordingly, Packers used red balls and colored clothes for cricket.

The Packers roped in former England captain Tony Greig to add to their World Series lineup of cricketers. Also, they were entrusted with the responsibility of bringing legendary cricketers. At that time Greg made almost all the great cricketers of the world ready to play in the world series cricket for a huge amount of money and made an agreement with them that they will not play cricket for their country.

This meant that they had forced legendary cricketers from around the world to rebel against their own country.

The day and night cricket of the Packers was so well received by the audience that there was a huge crowd outside the football stadium for tickets. Also, most of these cricket matches were watched on TV. This made the cricket boards of all countries nervous and demanded that the Australian Cricket Board be given the right to show Test matches. Until then, only 17 matches of World Series Cricket had been played.

The Packers canceled the World Series after their demand was met and released all cricketers from their contracts. Although, that series ended at 17 matches, after that all countries preferred day-night cricket. From there the day-night tri-series started every year in Australia.

According to some reports, then great player Sunil Gavaskar was also interested in playing in the series, while according to Bishan Singh Bedi, it was wrong to buy players. No Indian player played in this series due to various reasons. (The beginning of kerry packer circus world series cricket)

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