TOPIC:

I have been re-thinkinking the Leeds disaster in 1981, especially in terms of making a full-blooded defence of K J Hughes and his captaincy. People will rememmber that, at the time, Hughes took some stick from Mcgilvray -- although not Benaud -- for enforccing the follow-on.

There were some good reasons for Hughes to enforce the follow-on

he had the Anglo-Saxons on the run
there was always a danger of rain spoilling a match in England
from memory there was a rest day so we can't argue that the bowllers were cream crackered

BUT, let us assume that he had taken McGilvray's advice and batted third -- that is again, I have honestly come to the sad conclusion that we still would have lost the test match.

One can imagine, all too easily, Australia being rolled in the third innings and England going on and chassing down the target of around 320.

All the more so, when we consider the simple truth about that match -- the bowllers failled not the batsmen -- they failled to get out, not just I T Botham, but bloody Dilley and Chris Old from Yorshire.

Yep, I honestly believe that KJ was doomed whatever he did in that test match.

If you look at the scorecard for that match AR you will see that the three quick bowlers for Australia had a very large workload spread across two innings, Alderman bowled 54 overs, Lillee 44 and Lawson 36. In contrast Ray Bright the specialist spinner only bowled 4 overs in the entire match. It was a seaming pitch no doubt and probably not suited to a bowler like Bright, but the argument was that he may have disrupted the rhythm of the Botham/Dilley partnership by taking a bit of pace off the ball and also given Alderman who was tiring a bit of a break. I don't think Hughes rated Bright very highly. Peter Willey who was Englands part time spinner in the match bowled 16 overs and took the wicket of Trevor Chappell.

There have been many varying comments on this game. Put aside for a moment the Ladbrokes incident.
I never thought that KJH made a bad call on the follow on but, good or bad call, we were left with only 139 ? to win and we blew it.
Take nothing away from a superb bowling effort by Bob Willis but IMO it was, in the end, a game the Aussies should not have lost.