ABSTRACT
In March 1999, John Howard, Australia’s Prime Minister and Leader of the right-wing Liberal Party, issued what was called a ‘Preamble’, which was his contribution to a national debate over whether or not the country should become a republic. Leading Australian cricket writer Gideon Haigh has characterised them as a ‘conservative gerontocracy’. Nevertheless, ‘brighter cricket’ remained a matter of contention in the Australian game. When the Australian Test team arrived in Britain in 1948, as a gesture symbolising the continuing bond between Australia and the Mother Country, they brought with them 17,000 food parcels, a gift from the people of Victoria. The history of Australian cricket since the late 1970s – and, indeed, the history of cricket generally in that period – has been informed most signally by what’s been called the ‘Packer Revolution’ – a series of crucial innovations that consecrated a marriage between sport and television.
