Peter Alliss: 'This is golf's answer to Disneyworld', Golf Hall of Fame induction 2012

7 May 2012, World Golf Village near St. Augustine, Florida, USA

Well, thank you, Terry, for that very under stated welcome.

I've watched a lot of these ceremonies, you know, the Oscars and the Emmys, and I've always marveled at everyone who goes up to get a prize and they never know what to say, do they, and they're all in tears and they're all gushing and saying how surprised they are, but I always assumed they'd known who'd won the prizes a few days before.

So I must thank somebody, and there's so many people here tonight. I've really done very little in my life. I've just waffled along, loving the game of golf and being observant, and things have always just come my way. I listen to people and they say, I've always wanted to do that job or that job and they've worked and schemed and connived to get it, whereas all these wonderful things have just fallen into my lap for some inexplicable reason.

Two people I should really thank first of all are my mother and father. I want you to picture the scene and the time. It was late April, 1930. My father was the golf professional at the Van Zee Golf Club on the outskirts of Berlin. He'd been in the first world war, and he fought with the Argyle Southern Highlanders, was wounded twice. Came out, though. He was born in 1897. He came out as a 20, 21 year old and went into the world of golf. He'd done a bit of caddying and that sort of thing.

Anyway, in 1926 he decided, I thought bravely or foolishly, when a job was advertised in Germany that he would go and work there because on the continent you became a professor, whereas in Britain you were just‑‑ on the continent you were really something a bit special. He built up a very good reputation as a teacher at this club, which was very splendid, and I can picture the scene at the end of April, father had a busy day teaching. They lived in a handsome bungalow, in the middle of the Black Forest where Van Zee Golf Club was situated. I can see mother standing at the door with the light behind her probably wearing her best Winceyette nightgown with the high collar and long sleeve, and father arriving back home, and supper is ready dear, what sort of day have you had? And he would say, well, it's been a bit tricky today. The word Nazi had not been invented then, but there were some nasty people, and he explained to my mother what a miserable day he'd had and these people were horrible.

But as he drank his soup, he started to smile, and he said, “but I sent two of them away with the worst slices you've ever seen”. He said, “the sort of slice that is totally incurable and will stay with them all their days”, and somehow I felt that that was indeed a little bit of a comeuppance for his two bullets that had gone through his arm two years ago.

I was indeed the heaviest baby. 37 years I had that record. I was one of twins would you believe. The other boy did not develop. Mother was 5'2" and weighed about 120 pounds. So she had a very difficult time. I mean, I was that sort of big, almost ready for work as soon as I popped out.

She did have a difficult time, and I know for a fact it was almost seven months before she rode her bicycle. That was a joke for the gynecologists actually.

1932 the family came back to Britain, father went on his professional career playing and teaching, good golf jobs, and I went to school and all that stuff. But the first competition I ever played was 1946, the boys championship, played on the west side of Edinburgh at a course called Brunsfield. I went there and I was playing off scratch at that time, and I went there and they picked me to play for England boys against the Scots, and I played very well and we beat the Scots. They'd been beating us every year we went about 8 & 6 or something. I was installed as one of the favorites to win, sailed through a few rounds, and I was up against a little lad calls Donald Dunston in the semifinals, a rather pasty, pale looking boy with a very bad complexion, and I was six foot tall and bordering on the beautiful, I suppose. I really was. I mean, I look at those old pictures, and I really fancied myself.

Anyway, we set off, and I won the first couple of holes, and I was‑‑ it was a beautiful day. Anyway, he beat me 3 & 2, which brought me down to earth a bit, and going back on the train, my father said, well, you've learnt your lesson, you should have done this, you should have defended when you attacked, but I don't think there's any point in you trying for any further education, you're not going to be a doctor or lawyer at calm den. You could come and be my unpaid assistant. I thought that was very generous. He was remember a Yorkshire man and had been spending a lot of time with the Scots in the first world war. So it came to pass I went to work for my dear old dad, and I had no concept at that time going back a bit crest fallen having been beaten by this pimply‑faced youth when I had so much to offer, I had no idea that the game of golf would take me down so many wonderful paths.

I played pretty well, got in my first Ryder Cup cap in 1953, went on to play in another seven, World Cups 10 times, winner of 20 odd tournaments, and then the chance of television came along, journalistic experience, writing for a couple of newspapers, magazines, and so on and so on.

But of all the places and things I've had‑‑ people say, which part of your life did you enjoy the most. I've enjoyed it all because I've never really worked very hard at it, just dear old Gary Player will absolutely guarantee that he never saw me out practicing. I used to hit a dozen balls with a 2‑iron. I was bloody good with a 2‑iron. And the ground was a bit rough. If I hit sort of seven decent ones out of 10, I didn't see the point in spending all day long hitting any more. I knew how it worked, and if it went all right, it was fine.
I must tell Tiger that one day if I get a chance.

But it was a wonderful time for learning, and then of course I started doing television in the early '60s, and by 1974 pro celebrity golf had started, and through my association with Mark McCormack and IMG, he introduced me to the world of television over here and working for ABC television.

It's very difficult to pick the BBC or ABC. I'm an Englishman, and of course one is always happiest at home. But I never enjoyed myself more than coming here and working with ABC. Why? Well, there were lovely people. One or two of them shouted a bit and swore, but they didn't swear at me too often. And the big boys always wound up the tournaments. They did the 17th and the 18th holes, so I could clear off after the 16th green. I suppose in four days of television I might have actually spoken for about an hour, and they paid me a ridiculous amount of money. And a first‑class airfare from London, and if it was necessary, use the Concord.

So I had nothing to complain about at all, but I've loved coming here and working on the television and watching the changing face of the world of golf. The Allisses have been around the game for over 100 years, and we've pretty well seen everything, all the changes in equipment and clubs and what have you, and people say, well, what has been the most significant part of the game, and probably something silly like cylindrical mowers to cut the fairways. In early days, and I've always said the players between 1900 and 1930 were probably the most skillful the world has ever seen. And they look at you and they say ‑‑ I do believe that if you look at the equipment they had, and you can go to the museum and look at it, the balls weren't round, the equipment was very weird, the greens weren't cut. The two sheep would nibble away and that was that.

The bunkers weren't raked. They perhaps from 1926 on they raked them on Mondays and Fridays and that was it, and players had to scoop out the holes they made on the bunkers. And yet they were going around with 72s and 74s on our championship courses which was quite remarkable with the tools they had, people like Bobby Jones and the people before him, quite remarkable. That doesn't mean to say that we don't marvel of the skills of the players today. But I do believe, and I'm not saying this as some old fart, with the equipment today, it has changed the face not only of golf but sport. One of my dearest friends is Sterling Moss, motor racing driver. When he was in his peak, they used proper petrol in the car, not whatever it is today, and if you hit something, the car burst into flames and you died. Now they have wonderful cars which you can hit a wall at 200 miles an hour and the chances are you'll escape with a couple of broken ankles. Everything has improved.

I saw Roger Banister break the 4 minute mile, and when he went through the tape he almost died. Now they do the 4 minute mile in about 3? minutes, and they come off and the fellow is waiting, well, what do you think about that? I don't feel much. It'll clear off, but they're hardly out of breath. These fellows and women are hardly out of breath. So times have changed quite dramatically. I've loved every moment of it, and coming here, I'm not saying this just because you're all here and everyone is looked after, my wife and my son and his dear wife, Kelly Rose, while we've been here. I'm not saying all that because people are expected to say it. This facility is most remarkable I've seen in the world of golf. It's sort of golf's answer to Disney World to me because you go to Disney World and you marvel at what was created there. The museum, the golf courses, the hotel, when you come in from the main road, the way the gardens are prepared, the trees, the staff, the volunteers, it's quite magical. And I've seen a fair bit of stuff in my time. But it is truly amazing the way they've done the museum, the way it's encapsulated all these personal bits and pieces of memorabilia. It's quite stunning. Quite stunning.

So it's time to‑‑ I could waffle on for another four or five hours. I just want to say this: I think of it often because I did leave school early. I was quite bright, but I remember my last report which was sent home. We had a headmistress that my modest school was called cross by house school. She was a Mrs.Violet Weymouth, and she was a short Welsh woman. She always had a cigarette dangling out of her mouth and the smoke used to trickle up here, and you could see where the smoke went. There was sort of a brown line up there. But she was‑‑ you didn't mess about with Mrs. Weymouth, I can tell you that. I'm always staggered today where I read that children go to school and beat up the teachers. They wouldn't have done that in my day, I'll tell you. But I remember the last report she sent back to my parents, and it went something like this: Peter does have a brain, but he's rather loathe to use it. His only interests appear to be the game of golf and Violet Pretty, a girl I liked. She never knew about Iris Baker, but they were the two that uced me to some of the ways of the world, for which I'll be eternally grateful. And although we were very young, I wish to God we could do it today.

I fear for his future were the last words she wrote on my report. So mom and dad died a long, long time ago, and if there is such a thing as heaven and if people do look down, well, mom, dad, here we are. Look at this lot. Look where I've been, look what I've done. Never worked very hard at it. But it's all fallen into place. Lovely family, lovely wife, looks after me, shouts a bit occasional. But they are remarkable. They put up with all my nonsense, and I love them dearly.

And Mrs.Weymouth, if you're there, (holds up middle finger).

Bruce McAvaney: 'And then there was Cathy ... and that's the one', Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award - 2020

6 March 2020, Crown Palladium, Melbourne, Australia

I might keep these, I think, Dennis. Thank you. Dennis, thank you.

As we saw tonight at the beginning, there's a lot happens with that clip. And we've got a World Cup match that might get 90,000 people at the MCG, on Sunday.

We've got Russia, FINA, Sheikh Mohammed, Casa Semenya, coronavirus, Tokyo 2020, understanding mental health problems, animal welfare.

But I thought tonight I'll talk from the heart and not from the head.

Because those issues are — some of them common sense, and many of them are complex. And they are difficult to work out, even as a sports broadcaster.

I do feel like number 24 in that great race, the lowest saddle cloth possible. Particularly sitting next to Laurie tonight, and the people that have been honoured and the way that I am this evening.

I said to Annie, my wife, about three days ago, what would be appropriate tonight? And she said, "Well, Barrie Cassidy announced his retirement when he got it last year."

Dennis and I have talked a lot about the exit. How do you? And Dennis has done the soft landing — still working in Perth. But as he said to me, "You don't retire the ego." And that's the trick, I guess for all of us.

So a bit from the heart hey? I've got a lot of people that have helped me, from Gordon Bennett and Gary Fenton, through to Lewis Martin and Col Southee. And in between people like David Barham and certainly Josh Kay, who's done so much for all the broadcasters. And he is here tonight. So thank you Josh.

All of those people have made an enormous difference.

In this room I've had some the greatest anxiety that I've ever had in my life. Because this is the Brownlow Medal room. And many years ago things were going a little hairy, about a half an hour before the Brownlow. Our producer at the time, Tracy Damon looked at me and she said, "We're going to be all right. You're hosting."

If only she knew. If only she knew how I was feeling at that moment. But she did. She empowered me. I felt a responsibility. I felt for one minute that I was captain of the Channel 7 team. God, it made me lift and get my act together. So all those Channel 7 people that have helped me over the years, and those broadcasters from Sandy Roberts to Brian Taylor, and in particular, Dennis.

One of the great thrills of my life, and sad in a way, was to be with Dennis with his final AFL call. Remarkable match. When Picken did run into that open goal and the drought did finally end. An amazing day, an incredible experience for both of us to realise that our partnership was ending, and that arguably the greatest voice in football was going to be heard for the last time on an AFL grand final.

Les Carlyon, Harry Gordon, if you're a writer.

Ron Casey, Bill Collins, if you wanted to be a broadcaster. That's the way I grew up living in Adelaide. It was Bill that I wanted to be. I didn't want to call like him. I wanted to be him, to be honest. His clarity, the colour at the same time. Fact and fiction, maybe. His rhythm. His ability not to call a race, but to describe it and to read it and then to bring it home and make the hair on the back of your head stand up.

I was hooked from a very, very young age.

I've worked alongside of lot of ex champions like Robert Otie and Raelene Boyle and Jim Courier, Leigh Matthews, and they've all held my hand and helped me through. I've been fortunate. Opportunities, Seven have provided them and so did Ten. How lucky I've been to be able to speak publicly on those occasions that Dennis talked about. To talk when that ball bounces away from Stevie Milne. To be there when Glenn Boss brings Makybe Diva back, and they just stand there in front of the stand.

To be there when Winx, in the blue and white, walks through the tunnel onto the track for the final time. To be there when Carl Lewis in 1984 put the baton from his left hand to his right hand, and ran alongside Jesse Owens in the same lane, and broke the world record in the 4x100. And then Carl and Ben four years later. And then Michael Johnson's masterpiece in Atlanta. And then El Guerruj who looked like being never and then became the best ever. And then the bloke that was probably the best of them all who morphed into Muhammad Ali in the last 10 metres of the hundred metres. How dare he do that? Usain Bolt.

And then there was Cathy. And that's the one that if I ever had to look over the cliff, that was the one. And she did get away, and she did run well on the back straight. And she did explode like she did in Atlanta. And she did lift when she hit the front and she looked a winner.

And Raylene summed it up beautifully. Relief, she carried us on. How lucky am I? Opportunity. So, so fortunate. Dennis described it perfectly.

If I've got a talent... Just because I feel more comfortable talking to you right now than I did ten minutes ago, that I'm better with the headphones on, than without them on. And if I've left anything, it's, I hope I've helped someone along the way.

I'll finish by quoting something that meant a lot to me and still does us. We're all inspired by words. And when I was young, probably fifty years ago, I read this, that Gatsby believed in the green light. “The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we’ll run faster, stretch out our arms further. And one fine morning... And so we beat on boats against the current. Born back ceaselessly into the past.”

I don't know exactly what it means. But I know what it makes me feel. Thanks everyone.

John Harms: 'No, my father could not pass a cricket match' Australian Cricket Society - 2012

3 May, 2012, Australian Cricket Society, toast to cricket

Thanks to you Ken and the Cricket Society for the invitation to give this toast to a game we love. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Cricket is a brilliant game.

I can’t touch my toes, I have a gnarley finger that won’t bend in the cold, a liver which was enlarged by lingering in sticky-carpeted clubhouses throughout the 80s - and has never settled down – and, despite the therapy, I still wake screaming in the night as I re-live the dropping of the steepler which cost us a grand final…. yet I still believe that this great game has served me well. That grand final was just 26 years ago now, and, besides, it was the keeper’s catch.

No, cricket has served me well.

And it was always going to. Because of the many, many fine things my father did for me and for my three brothers, teaching us to love the game of cricket was one of the finest. He really loved it, and he helped us to really love it.

After I left home to go to university, I looked back on my childhood and I started to realise that my father had cricket in him. He had been an opening bowler with a classic Lindwall action and was sent in to bat at No 3. “to knock the shine off the ball”.

He played with us in the backyard, as did my mother, who had a wicked arm from hoicking spuds. She’d grown up on a potato farm in the Lockyer Valley.

Dad took time to teach us: to use our feet, to play the late cut “out of the keepers gloves”, to bowl leggies.

But I really knew Dad had cricket in him when I looked back at those Saturday afternoons when we would be driving around Toowoomba. We’d pass a cricket match at Newtown No. 1, or Godsall Street. Dad was one of those blokes who felt compelled to stop the car and watch for a while. “We’ll just get out and see what the opening bowler’s doing,” he’d say.  

So he’d bundle us out of the car and we’d walk to one end and watch for a few overs, and having worked out the batsman’s style he’d take us to that spot where the cricket ball was most likely to cross the boundary. And there we’d stand. I can remember as a tiny boy the rock-hard ball coming towards us, and we’d collect it, an under arm it back to the fieldsman whose heavy boots thundered across the ground towards us. He’d turn and throw a massive throw, over the moon. And jog back as the batting side continued to applause and yell things like “Shot, Macca.”

How would we ever hit the ball so hard? Or throw it so far?

No, my father could not pass a cricket match.

Nor could he pass on the opportunity to watch great batsmen. He was a clergyman; a pastor in the Lutheran church. So on Saturday afternoons he’d be busy preparing his sermon in his study with the radio on, Alan McGilvray describing the Test Match. Often it would get the better of him and he’d wander in to the lounge room to “see how the Australian batsmen were getting on”. Sometimes he’d stay.

I remember vividly Boxing Day of 1981 – it was a Saturday. He stayed all of that afternoon, to watch one of the great Test innings – the famous century from Kim Hughes (who will follow me to the lectern).

I should also mention that I rang my cousin Chris Harms today, who played for South Australia. Chris also has a therapist - from bowling at K.J. Hughes – whom he describes as “the scariest batsman he ever bowled at”.

Dad thought that was one of the great innings.

My father is no longer with us. He was a loving man; yet, for all of his capacity for love, and his pleasure in the aesthetic of sport and in fair play, he hated the Collingwood Football Club. He didn’t handle the loss to the Pies in the 2010 preliminary final too well – he died just after midnight.

But he left us with many memories. And he has left his children and his children’s children with a love of the game, and a respect for the game.

Our Theo, named after my father, is the oldest of our three. When I stand before him saying, “Watch the ball. Watch the ball,” I hear my father’s voice.

I only hope I can instil in my children the same depth of appreciation of this wonderful game: the game of cricket.

To cricket.

Michael Parkinson: 'Sir Donald Bradman was one of two men I most wanted to interview but never did', Bradman Oration - 2003

18 December, 2003, Bradman Oration, Brisbane, Australia

There is a certain irony in me being invited to give a speech in the name of Sir Donald Bradman in that he was one of two men I most wanted to interview but never did.

Never got close. Never even met him.

The other one who got away was Frank Sinatra but at least I was introduced to that great man.

I was taken to a party hosted by Sinatra with a great friend of mine, the songwriter Sammy Cahn. Sammy said "I'll introduce you and once Frank has met you then I'm sure one day he'll do the interview." So I met Sinatra. "Frank this is Mike" said Sammy. "Hi Mike" said Frank. I circulated for a while. I was the only person in the room I didn't recognise. Time to go and I went up to Frank "Goodbye Frank" I said. "Goodbye David" said Frank. The Don even more elusive than that.

But why was he top of my list. Because he dominated a game more than any player before or since. Because he gave a nation pride and status. Because he was one of the first great superstars of sport and because for all his celebrity, remained a private and elusive figure. What more does an interviewer want? No player embodied the principles of the game more than Sir Donald Bradman. There has been no more ardent custodian of the games traditions.

So anyone making a speech bearing his name needs to be aware of the standards he set and to investigate if they are being tampered with. And that is what we will attempt to do tonight.

First of all I should present my credentials. The problem with television fame is it distorts everything including the real sense of who and what you are.

What I am is a frustrated cricketer. I would have given anything to have played professionally. My father, an even more ardent Yorkshiremen than his son, went to his grave believing me to be a failure. Just before he died he said to me "You've done alright haven't you lad?" I said I had. "Made a bit of money, interviewed all those Hollywood stars, hob-nobbed with the rich and famous" he said. "It's been good" I said. He thought a bit, then he said "but think on lad, it's not like playing cricket for Yorkshire is it?" What he was defining was the difference between fame and immortality.

He saw everything in cricketing terms. If he stepped outside and it was a lovely day he wouldn't say "nice day" or whatever. He'd feel the sun on his face and say "we'll bat".

In a restaurant he would ask the bemused waiter for the scorecard instead of the menu. He wanted to call me Melbourne because I was born shortly after we had won a Test match in that city. When my first son was born we had just won in Pakistan. He rang me up. "What are you calling the lad?" he said. "Andrew" I replied. "Thought about Karachi" he said.

He was a coal miner, a fast bowler with an action modelled on his hero Harold Larwood and a humorist and he taught me not just how to love the game but how to respect it.

He was not a neurotic man but he was obsessed by what he considered to be the greatest mystery of them all - how could Don Bradman's batting average be double that of Len Hutton. In other words how could anyone be twice as good as Hutton?

He took me to Headingley in 1948 to find out. Now to say that Don Bradman liked batting at Headingley is like saying Romeo fancied Juliet. It misses the point. Bradman loved batting in Yorkshire and the Yorkshire crowd adored him. His Test average at Headingley is 192. He made 33 when we watched him. Made up for it in the second innings with 170 odd.

There is an affinity between Yorkshire and Australia. It was a Yorkshireman, Captain Cook born in Whitby, who had the good sense to bump into this island.

A Yorkshire firm, Dorman Long, built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Fred Truman told me that. We were gazing from the Opera House to the Harbour Bridge and Fred said "Yorkshire firm built that you know Parky". Then he said "this lot still haven't paid us for it".

So I grew up feeling a kinship with Australia and when I first came here in the late 70's I was not disappointed. Mind you I had a fine guide and mentor in Keith Miller.

Keith was my boyhood hero. He was probably the cricketer who inspired me more than any other. As soon as I saw him on that 48 tour of England I was smitten, a severe case of hero worship which, I am glad to say, has lasted to the present time.

It was Neville Cardus who described him as `the Australian in excelsis'. John Arlott said that if he had to choose one cricketer to hit a six, get a wicket or a blinding catch to save his life it would be Keith Ross Miller.

To my young eye he was the most glamorous man I had ever seen. Not only was he a swashbuckling athlete but he flew fighter bombers during the war and once, returning from a mission took a detour to fly over the birthplace of Beethoven, his favourite composer.

In modern parlance, how cool was that?

The war affected him greatly. I once asked him why he played in such a carefree manner and he replied that anyone who'd ever had a Messerschmidt up his arse would thereafter greatly enjoy the prospect of playing cricket for a living.

I played in the same team as him. In the 60's we both worked for the Daily Express in London and we had an annual fixture against the Daily Mail.

Keith had an interest in a race meeting at Ascot that afternoon and had arranged for a friend to stand by the sightscreen signalling the results as they came in. He was at first slip and I was at second. He was looking at his friend who was about to announce the winner of the opening race when the batsmen flashed at our quick bowler and the ball flew to my right hand.

It was too quick for me. I never moved. I gave it up.

At that moment miller took off, dived across me, made the catch, rolled over, gave me the ball and still gazing at his friend said "I wonder what won the 2.30".

What he didn't say, but he was thinking, was "we catch those in Australia".

I have always thought that the perfect medal to be struck to celebrate all that is meant by Australian cricket, would have Don Bradman on one side and Keith Miller on the other.

What they symbolize is the Australian character at its very best.

Bradman was of course, a genius. He also epitomised the Aussie battler, the man of few words but great deeds. Miller was the handsome, sunkissed playboy who laughed at life and didn't give a stuff.

Bradman was the outback and the fight against nature, Miller was Bondi Beach and a celebration of the good life.

Any country capable of producing two such singular men has reason to be optimistic as well as proud.

It was Miller and Jack Fingleton who introduced me to Australia. Jack was a great personal friend of mine, a man I admired as a fine writer of the game - one of the very best - and a man who I enjoyed for his droll Aussie wit.

I interviewed him three times on my talk show. Each occasion he wound himself up into a terrible state of nerves. On the first time he rang me up saying he couldn't sleep because he was worried his false teeth didn't fit properly. I said I couldn't advise him on the issue as it seemed to be a unique problem. He turned up to do the show on the ABC and I noticed he was speaking funny, that his top lip wasn't moving. He explained that in order to make sure his teeth stayed in place he had added a fixative to his morning toilet and had overdone it to the extent his top set were now firmly glued to his top lip. Using industrial solvents we managed to unglue him before the show.

The last time I interviewed him he rang me from his hotel room to talk about the show. We talked about how nervous he was and how he wished he could think of something original to say or do. Then he said: "Tell me Mike, has anyone ever croaked on your show"?

Dear Jack, he stayed with us in England and bought us a rose. "It's called a Geoffrey Boycott," he said. "Why" I asked. "It takes a long time to bloom," he said. It is still there, a reminder of a dear man. I think of him as much as I miss him, which is a lot.

He and Miller decided to hold a lunch in Sydney where I might meet one or two of their friends. At the lunch were Ray Lindwall, (Peg) Bill O'Reilly, Alan Davidson, Harold Larwood, Arthur Morris and Neil Harvey. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

In fact when I do die and if I do go to heaven I want the same dining arrangements.

So all this by way of explaining why I have always felt at home in Australia and why I have had a long and abiding admiration for Australian cricket and the men who play it. Since I started watching and playing the game more than fifty years ago much has changed. Significantly the most important and fundamental changes have occurred in Australia . World Series Cricket changed the face of the game, Kerry Packer and his acolytes, condemned at first as the anti-Christ and his followers, are now seen as the architects of the modern game. It wasn't simply they marketed and promoted the one day game as the fact that the very nature of the new game demanded different skills and, as important, level of fitness from players. It was the death of the old pro and the start of a time when only the fittest could expect to compete.

What one-day cricket did was expand the market, involve a new audience to the extent that in terms of commercial potential it has made Test cricket a sideshow. The traditional game, that which separates it from the rest - because it is the ultimate test - is not about to disappear - yet.

Cricket - Test cricket - is an awkward game to slot into the ultra competitive TV market of the third millennium and the trick in the future will be for TV companies and cricket executives to meet the challenge while not sacrificing either the unique quality of the game nor its integrity.

And if we really are mindful of the game's integrity, and if we believe that the duty of succeeding generations of people involved with cricket is to protect its reputation, then we must be concerned about what I perceive to be a growing problem in the modern game.

Bowling with an illegal action: chucking. This a particular bee in my bonnet.

It would be wrong to say there is an epidemic but I believe there are enough dodgy actions in the game to create a suspicion the problem might be a growing one. Even more worrying is the nagging thought that no one administrators, umpires, commentators seems able or willing to confront the problem.

They will tell you one thing privately yet are reluctant to go public with their doubts. The argument that certain players have been investigated in the past and cleared of chucking doesn't mean to say they don't chuck. Because a man takes a drug test and is clear doesn't mean he need never be tested in future.

I think there is enough disquiet on the issue to warrant the authorities taking a fresh look at the problem. There can be no leeway, no excuses medical or otherwise. Now I don't wish to embarrass my hosts and their guests by raising this contentious subject. On the other hand it seems to me to be particularly relevant to an occasion honouring a man who made his views on throwing very clear during a time in Australia when three or four bowlers were suspected of having illegal actions.

The world's a much more complicated place nowadays. Sporting decisions become political issues. There is the relatively new mine field of political correctness to negotiate. Nonetheless it would be wrong to compromise on this matter and I sincerely hope that those charged with the future of the game don't let it down.

It is no good administrators and the media criticising the conduct and attitudes of players and spectators when they themselves could be accused of sidestepping controversial issues. It is important cricket sticks to its principles. That it does not choose the convenience of political expediency.

If you want to know the consequences of negligence on such issues then I will ask you to consider what has happened to football in England . There you have a game awash with money and bereft of any principle. The culprits are some players, ill-educated and witless who behave without concern for the world around them.

They are helped in their misdemeanours by greedy managers, unscrupulous agents, inert chairmen and a palsied governing body. Much of it sanctioned, by a media dominated by former players, who are more intent preserving some misplaced sense of loyalty instead of doing what they ought to be doing which is exposing and condemning corruption - and I use the word in its widest sense - of any kind.

Cricket is not to be compared with soccer, except as an example of what can happen to a game when money distorts values and those who are paid as watchdogs act as lapdogs.

That said let me congratulate cricket Australia on the way it is promoting what it calls `the spirit of cricket', and it will be interesting to see how cricketers the world over react to the vexed question of behaviour on the field.

From what we saw in Adelaide there are signs the players are taking heed. A truly epic encounter in burning heat was made even more memorable because of the spirit in which it was played. So well behaved were the Aussies the umpires were pleasantly concerned and asked the management if everything was alright.

Sledging is not new. Fifty years ago, playing cricket in Yorkshire, I grew up on it. One of the great joys of cricket is the verbal banter between players. It's a long day not to have a word or two.

That's alright. There's a humour in it. But no-one expects to go to work to hear crude sexual allegations about their wives or mothers, or to be insulted by a fellow international cricketer using the vocabulary of the yob, nor, worst of all, to be the victim of racial abuse.

No one wants to neuter a player or a team's competitive instinct. On the other hand to win gracefully and with style is the most important lesson of all because it shows the athlete has not lost his sense of perspective, that he understands what he is engaged in is a game, a pastime, an entertainment and that set against the important things in life - like family, birth, loss, famine, cruelty, war - it doesn't matter. If a game has any purpose in the grand design it is because it doesn't matter except as an antidote to things that do.

This Australian cricket team is one of the best of all time.

But they have been described as `ugly Australians'. The social researcher, Hugh McKay has suggested the Australian public loves to see them winning but finds it hard to love them.

I am tempted to say here that if you don't want them we do, and that if manners are all you have to worry about we devoutly wish we had your problems. Moreover judging by the impeccable standards seen at Adelaide this week both Aussies and Indians can be proud of their contribution to a magnificent occasion.

It is good to see `cricket Australia' addressing the situation at grass roots by working on leadership training with young cricketers. It is this attention to every aspect of producing young cricketers that has given Australian cricket a clear lead on the rest of the world. We - the rest - must be careful the gap does not become unbridgeable.

Having a great Australian team like Steve Waugh's, is a joy to savour but the rest of the world must learn how to match a system which started under Allan Border, and reached its peak under Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh.

The contrast in producing test cricketers between your country and mine is as extreme as can be imagined. Steve Waugh suggested the other day it might take England 50 years to catch up. There is a rumour he was joking. I don't think so. If I spoke for a day or so I would only scratch the surface of the difference and when you think of the problems of West Indian cricket and its decline you begin to understand that while this Australian team gives us reason to rejoice there is also a genuine concern about the future of the international game.

I would like to use this occasion honouring one great Australian cricketer and captain to pay tribute to another. Steve Waugh bows out of cricket at Sydney in a few days time. He can do so in the knowledge of a job well done.

If Test cricket is a different and better and more exciting game now it is because he made it so. No man born ever wanted to win more than Steve Waugh and yet he wasn't afraid of losing. What he hated was a boring draw.

As a player his record tells us he was one of the greats. But statistics tell you nothing of his remorseless and sometimes ruthless approach to his chosen occupation. He has made a significant contribution to the world of cricket and the highest compliment I can pay is to observe that had he been born in Yorkshire he would have been perfect.

And finally I take it as a sign from the gods that a speech in the name of the greatest Test batsmen of them all should have taken place in a week when we witnessed one of the great test matches. India won and deservedly so but cricket was the real winner.

What we saw demonstrated why test cricket is the ultimate examination of technique, temperament, nerve, sinew and intellect. Why, at its best, its rhythms build to an irresistible climax like a great symphony.

At such times I realise why cricket engages this spectator like no other game. Why it gives this cynical observer hope for the future. Why it deserves the title `Sovereign King of Games'.