David Lloyd, Colin Cowdrey and Fred Titmus of England and Wally Edwards, Dennis Lillee, Ashley Mallett and Greg Chappell of Australia were all injured while batting in the series. However, the umpires were willing to give the batsmen the benefit of bad light several times, particularly if Lillee, Thomson or Willis were bowling. In the First Test at Brisbane Bailhache told Lillee and Thomson to stop bowling short, but they did not and he offered the England openers the benefit of the bad light. As a result, Ian Chappell complained about the umpire's interference as it was not his job to tell his team how to bowl, Frank Tyson agreeing. First Test – Brisbane Preliminaries For when Mike Denness and his side went to the ground on the Wednesday morning, two days before the First Test, the pitch to their astonishment was a morass of black mud. They left the acting-curator and reigning Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Clem Jones, clad in a yellow safety-helmet flattening it, roughly speaking, with a heavy motor-roller...Clem Jones is a regular Pooh-Bah whose energies are said to have accomplished much for the city of Brisbane; but as Michael Melford put it in The Daily Telegraph 'civic duties and curatorship do not easily blend.' E.W. Swanton Brisbane Tests were traditionally hit by torrential rain and in 1974–75 it fell heavily in the week before the match. The Lord-Mayor of Brisbane, Alderman Clem Jones, sacked the curator at the Gabba so that he could prepare the Test wicket himself. Jones had recently been dethroned as Queensland's representative in the Australian Board of Control, but was still influential in the Queensland Cricket Association. He was a hands-on manager who even manned the turnstiles when he saw the need and had prepared wickets before, but not at Test level. His efforts were not helped by the downpour which turned the ground into sludge, and he admitted that the Test wicket "was a bit crook at one end". However, the scorching Queensland sun and an army of staff working day and night dried out the ground and Jones discarded the muddy wicket for the one used in the Queensland-Western Australia state game. E.W. Swanton thought that over use of the heavy roller on the soft ground had created a ridge at the Vulture Street end, producing uneven bounce, but Frank Tyson noted that only Lillee and Thomson were able to