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.
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
SydneyQLondon
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
Apriland 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
Airporton 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.
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.
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)byFrank Tyson and Neil
Phillipson[Pelham Books]
"Frindall's Scorebook: Jubilee Edition"(1977)by Bill Frindall [Lonsdale Press]