I inserted them and you may stood throughout the longest waiting line, to have Greig’s trademark. If it try in the long run my personal turn, I summoned right up courage and advised your, which have a little quaver, it was a beneficial “helluva connect”. A special idol minted truth be told there and then. For the next several years, when he went into the greater circulation, Greig proved an advisable however, difficult character – a silver doubloon, never totally shedding its elemental lustre however, apparently needing curative refining. Along side second Papua Ny guineansk enlig kvinde couple of seasons, I watched him down from the Hove for the majority domestic online game. Save for 5 wickets and you may a quick 93 up against Hampshire during the July 1969, Really don’t think of him to make any high contribution. However, he constantly performed anything. A booming safeguards drive otherwise a tow shot moving off of the scoreboard to possess half a dozen.
Sussex thrashed them, and you will Greig is actually Man of your Meets: 54 in the first innings, regarding 199, and four wickets
Otherwise a great bouncer injudiciously aimed at Mike Procter’s direct, which up coming strike your having 4, cuatro, six, cuatro as he is clobbered for over 130 out of 20 strange overs. In which he always closed autographs. I had him eight times in 2 year. Immediately after, he even said, “Ach, it is you once more. We never ever saw him refute anybody. I sat underneath the spreading boughs of your own well-known lime forest. Robbo regaled us all round the day with stories out of viewing Les Ames, Godfrey Evans and you will Doug Wright due to the fact a good boy. The guts lamb are a mind container that has created a keen encyclopaedic knowledge of Kent cricket, and also to their particular father’s obvious fulfillment, besides admonished him when he nudged me and you will mentioned a nice-looking “popsy” on the crowd however, remedied him when he had some fact otherwise profile wrong.
That has been often. Robbo is never you to having analytical outline; it had been the storyline you to mattered. Kent’s illustrious history – if or not facts otherwise misconception – failed to let far thereon scorching July go out. Towards the end of the day, each other middle lamb and you will Robbo himself was certainly smitten. I know one to be real just like the, even with his daughter from earshot, my personal sibling no more talked of brand new enough time move from piss, however, of “Greigy”.
Greig played merely a support character one to date; an instant-flames 36 on the Sussex innings as well as 2 wickets, in addition to compared to Kent’s best scorer, Graham Johnson, stuck by Tony Buss from a long-leap
And Sussex did it once again 36 months later. Gillette Mug quarter-last, August step one, 1973, in the Hove. Through this day Greig was a newly oriented England player and Sussex head. Again, I went with Robbo, and we also about missed they. My bro had organised the day but when we pitched up ticketless during the Tate Doors, we were solidly turned away. An excellent sellout. Brand new stewards (“bloody absolutely nothing Hitlers”) didn’t come with vehicle having Robbo’s “Get real, it will be the boy’s birthday celebration now.” (It wasn’t.) But, the guy was not quitting one to effortlessly of course informed a tiny warily about precisely how I had on the ground free-of-charge having my personal friends, the next thing We realized I was providing my personal portly cousin a foot-up over the garden wall structure of a single of big properties you to supported onto the sea end of surface. Into the, buoyed of the our triumph, Robbo’s attraction struck overdrive in which he for some reason sweet-talked brand new faster draconian inside the-ground ushers very effortlessly, that we wound up in the gangway of one’s members’ pavilion, right beside the players’ balcony. Inside earliest innings I saw as Greig has worked their ways as a result of almost an entire package off Benson and you may Hedges, and you may Robbo, the actual only real Kent suggest among us, cheered all work at due to the fact their lads chased 264 in the next. Now an adolescent, I became a tiny embarrassed by this, but the good news is around were not many of them. Operates, which is. Kent were bowled aside having 135. However, one did not count. Because people stood with the outfield and you may basked from the many thanks of your 10,000-strong audience, Sussex got won. I noticed just like the brief boys lined up to get the skipper’s autograph – I became first off you to definitely today – and noted you to definitely Robbo had joined them. The guy and Greig was indeed soon involved with transferring talk. Each other was in fact chuckling, minds tossed right back, once the waiting line off quick boys prolonged, progressing seriously out-of ft in order to legs. Immediately following what seemed a very long time, it shook give warmly and you can Robbo patted his this new pal familiarly on the rear. The guy showed up bounding back up the pavilion tips, clutching their finalized scorecard – “It’s with the center lamb,” he lied – and beaming away from ear to ear. “They are a soft big bloke.” The sense it absolutely was Greig’s Sussex you to won the video game are palpable. John Spencer, the newest Sussex bowler, explained recently that if Greig took more, the entire conditions in the a pub “dogged by backbiting, cynicism and you can negativity” changed almost straight away. Greig is actually a breathing regarding bracing ocean sky.