SYDNEY, REUTER — Australian Captain Allan Border predicted test cricket could die as his countrymen reflected on the humiliating series defeat by West Indies.

Most fans and commentators, ignoring the touring side’s superiority in every sector of the game, bemoaned West Indies’ reliance on pace bowling after Viv Richards’s team won the third test and the series.

They attacked the West Indies “hit men” for using terror tactics rather than skill to beat the home side although Richards reminded then Australian had not been averse to using short pitched fast bowling in the seventies.

“The West Indies are getting away with murder … 1 am disgusted . . . if that’s not bodyline stuff I’d like to know what is,” were some of the comments of former Australian star Norm O’Neill, echoed by many others.

To their credit the Australian team has taken their punishment in silence but border sounded a note of warning about the Longterm effects of pace bowling.

“If every country had an attack like the West Indies, test cricket would die pretty quickly,” Border said after the loss.

“There is absolutely no pleasure in it, you walk in just wondering where your next single is going to come from and nobody really likes to get hit by a cricket ball at 90 mph.”

But Border admitted he would use the same tactics as West Indies if he possessed bowlers of the calibre of Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Patrick Patterson.

“If we had four fast bowlers like that we would do exactly the same, placed in the same situation we would want to be able to band the ball in. If you’ve got the firepower you have every right to use it.”

Richards made no excuses for his fast bowlers who bowled a stream of bouncers in the first innings but dismissed Australia for 114 in the second by bowling good line and length on a green pitch containing plenty of bounce.

“People talk about us bowling too many bouncers and so on but I say that the bouncers bowled in the match did no harm at all. The problem was the ball that flew from a length and we saw a lot of that,” Richards said.

Asked whether he had ever played in a match where so many bouncers had been bowled, Richards said: “Yeah, a long time ago in 197576. I was here and the crowds here calling ‘kill, Kill’ ” He was referring to the series in which Australia won 51 thanks to the efforts of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson.

Australian Cricket Board Chairman Malcolm Gray also warned that spectators could desert test cricket, blaming both sides for “an unrelenting battle that is not really conductive to attracting crowds.”

Article extracted from this publication >>  January 6, 1989