World Series Cricket

World Series Cricket (WSC) was Kerry Packer's rival professional competition, staged across two seasons from 1977 to 1979 after the Australian Cricket Board rejected his television network's bid for exclusive Test broadcast rights. It became the most consequential schism in the sport's history, forcing full-time professional pay for players and inventing the coloured-clothing, day-night, multi-camera spectacle that one-day cricket is still built on.

Why Packer went to war with the cricket boards

In 1976, Packer's Nine Network offered the Australian Cricket Board A$1.5 million for three years of exclusive Test broadcast rights — eight times the existing deal — and was rebuffed; the ACB instead re-signed with the government-run, non-commercial Australian Broadcasting Commission (renamed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation only in 1983) for a fraction of that sum, out of loyalty to a broadcaster that had covered the game for two decades. Packer, furious at what he saw as an "old-boy network" snub, then tried and failed to buy rights to Australia's 1977 tour of England. Aided by businessmen John Cornell and Austin Robertson, he decided to build his own competition instead.

Secret signings and the case for player pay

Packer's organisers secretly signed leading players from Australia, England, Pakistan, South Africa and West Indies on contracts worth far more than official cricket paid — among them England captain Tony Greig, West Indies captain Clive Lloyd, Australian captain Greg Chappell, future Pakistan captain Imran Khan, and former Australian captain Ian Chappell, who later called WSC the toughest cricket he ever played. The underlying grievance was real: players widely felt they were paid a fraction of what the game's growing television audiences were worth.

"Supertests," drop-in pitches and three touring sides

Barred by MCC's copyright from using the words "Test match" or the official Laws, and from calling his Australian side "Australia," Packer's five-day fixtures were renamed Supertests, contested by a WSC Australian XI, a WSC West Indian XI and a World XI drawing on the remaining signings. Shut out of the traditional grounds, WSC leased Australian-rules football stadiums and even a Perth trotting track; curator John Maley solved the resulting pitch problem by pioneering "drop-in" pitches, grown off-site in hothouses and craned into the stadium — a technique still used at multi-purpose venues today. The first Supertest, Australians against West Indians, was played at VFL Park, Melbourne, on 2 December 1977.

Coloured kits, floodlights and modern broadcasting

WSC marketed its fast bowlers — Dennis Lillee, Imran Khan, Michael Holding and Andy Roberts among them — as gladiatorial stars in their own right. On 17 January 1979, at VFL Park, the WSC Australians (in wattle gold) played the WSC West Indians (in coral pink) in the first match ever played in coloured kit, under floodlights, with a white ball and dark sightscreens for night viewing. WSC's broadcasts pioneered multiple camera angles, effects microphones picking up sound from the pitch, and on-screen graphics — the entire visual language that one-day and T20 cricket still uses.

The truce, and a legacy that outlasted the rebellion

Both sides were losing money by early 1979, and on 30 May 1979 ACB chairman Bob Parish announced a truce: Channel Nine won exclusive rights to broadcast Australian cricket and a ten-year contract, through a new company called PBL Marketing, to promote and market the game itself. WSC-contracted Australians were initially left out of official tours that followed, with mixed results, but by the 1979-80 domestic season Australia was fielding a mixed WSC and non-WSC side, playing a triangular one-day tournament — the World Series Cup — modelled directly on Packer's format. Coloured clothing and day-night matches spread through official one-day cricket over the following two decades, and traditional white flannels and a red ball in ODIs were finally phased out entirely in 2001.

Date	Event
1976	ACB rejects Channel Nine's broadcast bid
2 December 1977	First WSC Supertest, VFL Park, Melbourne
17 January 1979	First match played in coloured kit, under floodlights
30 May 1979	Truce announced; Channel Nine wins exclusive Australian cricket rights
2001	White flannels and the red ball finally retired from all ODIs

Two of WSC's signed captains, Imran Khan and Clive Lloyd, went on to lead their countries to World Cup glory using the professionalism and self-belief the competition gave them — a legacy that outlived the two seasons WSC actually played.