And it was Packer who forced the boards to start paying the players more. When Faiman explained his decision wasn’t anything to do with influence or affluence but just because he was “feeling so bad now I could kill myself” Packer pulled a gun out of his desk and said: “I can fix that too.”. And there is truth in that, in the way the IPL is packaged and sold to a mainstream audience, the pressure it puts on players to choose between representing their country and playing in a lucrative league. World Series Cricket drastically changed the nature of cricket, and its influence continues to be felt today. They included the time he shut up a loudmouth American who kept bragging he was worth $200m by offering to toss him for it, “double or nothing”. Even the punctilious staff of the Almanack were happy to relax their strict adherence to the facts for the sake of a good Packer yarn. A break away competition, the matches ran in opposition to established international cricket. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Packer wanted the TV rights and when he had them WSC was shut down. Like WSC, the IPL has forced the sport into accelerated evolution. But who knows where the IPL and Twenty20 cricket goes from here? And another when, turned away from one pub, he ate somewhere else, settled the £100 bill by writing a cheque for £100,000 and told the publican: “Before you bank it, take it to the other pub and show it to the bloke who wouldn’t give us any food.”, There will be plenty more of them on BBC Radio 5 Live later this week. Packer collected tall stories like a general does his ribbons. “Is it right that you went into the Supertest business to make money?” he was once asked under cross-examination in the high court. Three minutes into the first chukka he slumped down, arms around the neck of his horse. The players today may not be on “fish and chip” money, as Chappell used to call it, but the Australian Cricketers’ Association have just knocked back CA’s proposal to pay them AU$419m over five years, an offer the ACA say will short change female players. Tue 2 May 2017 12.49 BST When Packer was asked about the experience he replied: “I’ve been to the other side, and let me tell you son, there’s fucking nothing there.” When he died for the second, and final, time in 2005, they played a clip of a TV interview at his memorial service. It was Packer who insisted players start wearing helmets, because, as he told Chappell: “I’m not paying you to lie around in hospital for six months.” It was Packer who overhauled the way the game was televised and marketed. Simon Wilde. Soon after it, they were on over £1,000. It wasn’t for the love of the game. And for much of his life, he did. It is time to recognise Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket ‘Supertests’ as first-class matches. Now, as then, the question of TV rights is up in the air, in Australia and elsewhere. • This is an extract taken from the Spin, the Guardian’s weekly cricket email. He had a heart attack during a polo match. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. Ian Chappell tells one about the TV director Peter Faiman, who used to do the live shows for Packer’s Channel 9. The Kerry Packer SuperTests, the Rest of the World XI in England 1970, the World XI in Australia 1971-72. It was Packer who brought in coloured kit, floodlit day/night matches, white balls, and drop-in pitches grown in greenhouses. It took him three years to win them, and in that time he changed the game forever. Wisden once listed five favourite tales that, it clarified, were “believed to have a basis in truth”. One-Day games over two seasons Pakistan, India and England before Kerry Packer and the cricketing reached... It took him three years to win them, and drop-in pitches grown greenhouses... 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