When I read David Lord’s column in The Roar every morning, my mind goes back to 1973. ‘Til then cricket magazines in Australia (Australian Cricket and Cricketer) tended to be parochial.
Cricket coverage involved mostly Australia with bits and pieces from England and the West Indies. India, Pakistan and New Zealand got a look in only when they were touring down under.
Migrating from India in 1970, I found this frustrating. The dailies and afternoon papers were just as parochial.
This changed in 1973 with a bang. I could not believe my eyes when I browsed through a new magazine David Lord’s World of Cricket at a Newsagent.
It covered cricket globally with special correspondents from England (Ian Wooldridge, Michael Melford and Alex Bannister), India (Niran Prabhu), Australia (David Lord), South Africa (Peter Pollock), West Indies (Tony Cozier), Pakistan (Anwar Hussain) and New Zealand (Don Cameron).
Wow, what a gallery of cricket’s great writers from every Test playing nation.
It was a first in Oz cricket. For years cricket had been crying out for such a monthly, a vehicle to spread the word on what is happening around the world at Test and first-class level.
In all there were 160 glossy pages jam-packed with action pics, statistics, strong editorials, in-depth features and colourful interviews.
I contacted the editor, David Lord, and we soon became mates and remain mates after 40 years. It was a pleasure catching up with him a few weeks ago at a Roar get-together.
Let me go back to 1973.
He asked me to write for his “newborn baby” and lo and behold I was a feature writer for his World of Cricket (WoC).
I profiled Bishen Bedi, the turbaned Indian spinner, and soon I was the correspondent from India although I lived in Sydney.
It was not easy as there was no internet, websites or e-mail then and the press coverage of India in Australia was pathetic.
My friend BB Mama – alas no more – sent me match details by fax or express post.
I must have handled it well because a friend was astonished to see me in Sydney and asked when I arrived from India.
He could not believe that I was writing my in-depth columns on India in WoC from Sydney!
David Lord, “Lordy” to friends, gave me a free hand and apart from my columns on India he encouraged me to write my whimsical pieces like “Voodoo, hoodoo or coincidence” and quirky snippets.
Decades later I collected some of these and voila, in 2011 it became my 13th cricket book: Cricket Quirky Cricket.
But I am going ahead of the story. Lordy also published my series on famous cricketing families the Graces, Pataudis, Bedsers, Benauds, Chappells, Mohammads, Hadlees, Amarnaths, Pollocks and Khans, among others.
This eventually became my first book, Cricket’s Great Families, published in 1980.
So I owe a lot to David Lord who lifted me from obscurity to a published author. Like all good things his unique publication did not survive long. But it has left a heritage as the first truly international publication.
Lordy is a many-splendoured personality; warm, versatile and genuine who calls an axe an f-ing axe — no hypocrisy about him!
He was a cricket writer for The Sun (Sydney) and played as a first-grade all-rounder for Mosman Cricket Club in Sydney for 15 years, six as captain, until retiring in 1972.
He is also known for his radio and television commentaries.
He shot to fame when he defied Kerry Packer during the World Series Cricket days from 1977 to 1979.
He was the manager of some Test cricketers, including the legendary fast bowler Jeff Thomson, who resisted Packer’s cash.
Thommo played in the official Test series against India in 1977-78 and what a spine-tingling series it turned out to be.
Lordy wore many caps in his illustrious career; a first-grade cricketer, a writer, an editor and publisher, a radio and TV personality and a manager.
As a prolific sports expert for The Roar, his daily columns appear at seven am even if the matches in England, South Africa or the West Indies have ended at three am. Does he ever sleep?
When I boasted to him the other day that I have all the issues of David Lord’s World of Cricket magazine he replied “I have none. Not one!”
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