English cricket team in Australia in 1965-66

M.J.K. Smith captained the English cricket team in Australia in 1965–66, playing as England in the 1965-66 Ashes series against the Australians and as the MCC in their other matches on the tour. Although they failed to reclaim the Ashes this was not unexpected as the Australian press labelled them the weakest MCC team to arrive in Australia and the bookmakers were giving odds of 7/2 on their winning the series. These views rapidly changed as they set about winning their state matches with exciting, aggressive cricket and by the First Test the odds against them had been reduced to evens.Lindsay Hassett said "other teams from England may have been better technically but none had tried so hard to make the game as interesting as possible". Financially the tour's receipts were much lower than in 1962–63 due to the number of rain-affected games in a wet Australian summer and the general doldrums of the sixties.

In October, the team played two matches in Colombo during a stopover on the voyage to Australia. After leaving Australia in February, they played a three-match Test series in New Zealand and finally two matches in Hong Kong on the way home.

They had made no promised on arrival about 'brighter cricket' – that tiresome phase – but they had aimed to play better cricket, and by and large events had shown that taking the initiative brought the best results. Everyone knew who was behind this philosophy; it was Doug Insole, chairman of the selectors, and, of course, Billy Griffith, the tour manager.

Billy Griffith was an amateur wicket-keeper for Cambridge University and Sussex and the first secretary of the MCC to have been a Test player. He had been a glider pilot for the 6th Airborne Division during the Second World War, fighting at D-Day and Arnhem and winning the Distinguished Flying Cross. He became Secretary of Sussex after the war (as well as captain in the 1946 season) and was the player-manager and reserve wicket-keeper on the tour of the West Indies in 1947–48. When used as a makeshift opener on his Test debut he made 140 in six hours and later played two Tests in South Africa, the only wicket-keeper to be used between 1946 and 1959 when the great Godfrey Evans was available. The decline of amateur cricket in English county cricket and the increasing professionalism of the game led to dull, lifeless cricket as teams were determined to avoid defeat and viewed games as a job rather than entertainment (ironically the keenest cricketer on the tour was Geoff Boycott, a noted stonewaller). There had been a surge in gate receipts after the war, but this fell rapidly in the 1960s as other forms of entertainment became available to the public. Griffith had become Secretary in 1962 and oversaw the official merging of amateur and professional for the 1963 season, which prevented him from managing the MCC tour of Australia in 1962–63, except for one month when he flew out to relieve the Duke of Norfolk. Aware of M.J.K. Smith's natural caution the MCC gave Griffith extraordinary powers granting him overall control of cricket on the tour. Fortunately, he did not resort to these as he preferred more diplomatic means, but he urged attacking cricket in the tour games, notably against Western Australia. Normally the MCC manager took care of the players and social side of the tour, as there were many functions to attend. The Assistant-Manager was Jack Ikin who had toured Australia in 1946–47, who oversaw the tour finances, collecting gate money on behalf of the MCC, booking hotels and making the travel arrangements.

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