Asif Iqbal

It is a very sad day, for cricketers in particular.

It was because of Kerry Packer that the players got their rightful remuneration. For that I think all the players should be grateful to him. He brought in the money for cricketers and today's players are reaping the benefit of that.

I was approached for the Packer series when I was playing a Test series in the West Indies [Images]. There were no apprehensions about signing up for World Series Cricket, because all of us who participated in it belived in it. We believed that the World Series would lead to betterment of the cricketers.

Packer was a visionary. He is the one who saw the future of cricket. He invented day-night cricket, played under lights and with coloured clothing. Cricket's ruling body called it 'pyjama' cricket then but it is one-day cricket that is selling the game now.

When we signed for the World Series we expected an adverse reaction from the individual cricket bodies. But it didn't last long, once they realised the potential of it the issue settled down.

The way the game was televised or viewed also changed after that.

Zaheer Abbbas

Kerry Packer was the founder of colourful cricket.

A lot of problems that we face today in one-day cricket had already been worked out by Packer. For example, when we played night cricket, there were two kinds of balls -- white and yellow. You need a light coloured ball to see against the black sightscreen and the white balls used to lose their colour. So yellow balls were introduced to last through the innings.

Another interesting this was that, during the World Series Cricket they used to transfer the pitch from one place to another. They used to carry the turf where the matches were supposed to be played so that we always had a good pitch to play on when we went to places where we were not given proper facilities.

The World series introduced cricket to a whole new television audience. For the modernisation and commercialisation of cricket all I want to say is Thank You, Mr Packer.

He saw cricket as a business and brought in the profits, the game was sleeping before that. People have started getting instadia advertisements because of Packer's innovations.

Some people look at the commercialisation of cricket as a bad thing, but it helped the cricketers raise their price. Before that there was hardly any money for the players in the game.

The one reason I was keen about playing in the World Series was that I got to compete against the greatest players of the era. That was the biggest motivation.

When we were in doubt about how it would affect our careers with respective countries, Packer made it clear that whenever a player had to represent his country he would release him.