West Indian cricket team in England in 1976 the West Indian get on top they are magnificent cricketers, but if they’re down, they grovel. And I intend, with the help of Closey and a few others, to make them grovel.” The insensitive comments only inflamed the racial and colonial implications surrounding the 1976 series. The remark was particularly provocative coming from Greig, the white South African-born captain of England. West Indian bowler, Michael Holding recalled how the comment “Smacked of racism and Apartheid. He got our backs up and made us more determined.” Greig claimed the word "grovel" was used only as a response to the way the
Samuel Greig of captain. Samuel Greig married Sarah (1752–1793), daughter of Alexander Cook. Their union would give rise to children and grandchildren who later married into the Russian and German nobility. He was father to Alexey Greig, admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy, who would go on to have his own spectacular career in the Russian Navy. Alexey Greig would become a privy counsellor and knight of all the Imperial Russian Orders. Greig was father-in-law to Scottish science writer and polymath, Mary Somerville who was a distant cousin of his. Somerville had married Greig's fourth son, Captain Samuil Samuilovich Greig (1778–1807), who