A SINGLE SENTENCE, spoken in Melbourne 32 years ago, was to change the face of cricket for ever. Its serene, Corinthian traditions were holding true at the time, players still poorly paid subordinates to a reactionary and autocratic establishment. Then Kerry Packer said the fateful words: “Come on now, we're all harlots - what's your price?”

Offended by this alien approach, the Australian Cricket Board rebuffed Packer's demand for exclusive television rights to international games. Probably, they believed he would turn his unwanted attentions elsewhere. Instead, he created his own cricket, driven by commercialism and celebrity - the forerunner of the glitzy, relentless game we know today.

Gideon Haigh, Australia's most erudite cricket writer, was 11 years old when World Series Cricket launched. He was 26 when he wrote The Cricket War, a book of impressive research and detail, even allowing for the benefits of hindsight.

Now, another 15 years on, the work has been reissued. Though billed as a 30th-anniversary edition, it is more relevant as a historical accompaniment to the current, dizzy events in cricket.

Next week, the Indian Premier League, in which franchises have been bought and players auctioned for head-spinning sums, launches in Bangalore. Inevitably, it reminds many among us of the previous revolution in the sport and it makes re-reading of the Packer saga timely.

Though both raise the hackles of traditionalists, there are essential differences between WSC and IPL. The latter has been embraced by official bodies and will be played entirely over the 20-overs form of cricket that seemed a frivolous throwback to evening pub leagues until English county sides showed what a crowd puller it could be.

Packer's was a self-funded project in direct opposition to the establishment game. He bought up his players covertly and the shape of the cricket - what worked and what did not - evolved only during a painful first season in echoingly empty football stadiums.

Players joined Packer because they were scandalously underpaid - England cricketers received £180 for a Test appearance. Some were vilified for it. Tony Greig lost the England captaincy and ultimately left his Sussex home after his daughter was taunted at school.

Greig had been central to the recruitment process, conducted in extraordinary secrecy. The story finally leaked during a party for the 1977 Australian touring team at Greig's Sussex home.

As his friend and ghostwriter, that was a weekend I shall never forget.

Initial reaction was outraged scorn and misguided complacency. John Arlott wrote: “The English cricketing authorities could almost certainly destroy any such threat to the international game.” But they could not and did not.

In the High Court, the cricket establishment was humiliated, just as they would be when WSC discovered that floodlights, coloured clothing, helmets, jazzed-up TV coverage and a wonderfull catchy ditty called “Come on Aussie, Come On” would enchant a nation far more than an Ashes series without the stars.

Haigh trawls painstakingly through players' memoirs, contemporary accounts and reflective thoughts and adds more than a dash of dramatisation. It is a fine book about cricket's stormy, seminal years. But even Packer would never have imagined it would come to 20-overs games.

The Cricket War: the Inside Story of Kerry Packer's World Series by Gideon Haigh

Melbourne University Press, £22.95; 400pp

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