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Tony Greig dies aged 66

The former England captain Tony Greig has died at the age of 66 after a battle with lung cancer. Greig, who played in 58 Tests between 1972 and 1977, scored 3599 runs at 40.43 with eight hundreds, and picked up 141 wickets at 32.20, including 13 at Port-of-Spain in 1974.

A larger than life character, Greig captained England in 14 Tests from 1975 to 1977, including the infamous home series against West Indies in 1976, when his desire to make his opponents "grovel" backfired spectacularly. Never one to back down from a confrontation, Greig scored two brilliantly contrasting centuries, against India in 1976-77 when he battled a fever to set up a ten-wicket win, and in Brisbane in 1974-75 when he combatted the pace of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson with a gung-ho 110, and even took to signalling his own boundaries to rile them further.

Greig was arguably best known for his role in Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, for whom he helped to recruit players for the inaugural competition in 1977. He went on to become one of the lead commentators on Packer's Channel 9, and did not miss a day's work for 33 years, until the start of the recent Brisbane Test against South Africa.

Tributes have poured in from around the world, including from his long-time commentary colleague Bill Lawry, who tole ESPNcricinfo that cricket has lost "one of it's great ambassadors".

At the time of his death, at 1.45pm on the day after Australia's victory over Sri Lanka in the Boxing Day Test, Greig was with his family, including his second wife Vivian, his daughter Beau, his son Tom, and two adult children from his previous marriage - daughter Sam and son Mark.

Date: 29/12/2012 11:46:11 by AMiller
In: Today | Sussex | England |

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