He is also known for a controversial run-out of Alvin Kallicharran in a Test Match against the West Indies in 1974, and often clashed with Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee on the 1974–75 Ashes Tour in Australia.

Many former Sussex players had been recruited to coach the cricket team at Queen's College—during Greig's schooldays, Jack Oakes, Alan Oakman, Ian Thomson, Ron Bell, Richard Langridge and Mike Buss all came from overseas for off-season work.

[9] After Greig scored 156 in 230 minutes against a strong Lancashire attack in his first game for Sussex, his future direction changed irrevocably.

On the second day of the first test at the Queen's Park Oval in Trinidad, the West Indies had cruised to a first innings lead of 143, thanks mainly to 142 not out from Alvin Kallicharran.

With four wickets still in hand, the home team was in a dominant position when the last ball of the day was bowled to Bernard Julien, who blocked it past Greig (fielding in close on the off side) and then headed off to the pavilion with Kallicharran.

In a meeting involving the two captains, the West Indies board representatives and England's tour manager Donald Carr, it was decided – after two and a half hours – that Kallicharan would be reinstated, despite the umpire standing by his call.

[19] This was a good tune-up for the Ashes tour of Australia at year's end, where England would probably start favourite and Greig would be a key player.

Shocked by the Australian fast bowling attack of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee, most English batsmen struggled in the first Test at Brisbane.

Denness was sacked and Greig appointed, to high expectation that he would play aggressively and fearlessly in an endeavour to counteract the Australians' strengths.

[26] With a long gap between England commitments, Greig headed to Australia for the 1975–76 season to play grade cricket in Sydney.

He signed a number of endorsements and appeared in commercials in Australia, including in his ads for the new breakfast cereal "Nutri-Grain", where his catchphrase "It's just like a cricket bat with holes" struck a chord.

Moreover, apartheid and the Gleneagles Agreement were prominent issues of the day, so a white South African using the word "grovel" heavily accentuated the faux pas.

While it helped him to combat the short ball, it left him vulnerable to the yorker (full-pitch delivery) and he was bowled quite regularly for a top-order batsman: five times from his nine innings in the Test series, and once more in the second one-day international match.

Outside of a formidable performance in the fourth Test at Leeds, where he fought back with 116 and 76 not out and shared a big partnership with wicketkeeper Alan Knott, Greig scored just 51 runs from his other seven innings.

However, Greig did not lose his sense of humour: exaggeratedly playing on his "grovel" comment, he pretended to crawl on his hands and knees in front of the open stands on the Harleyford Road side of The Oval in the last Test match, delighting the crowds that had previously jeered him.

England had not won a Test series on the subcontinent for fifteen years and were clear underdogs against an Indian team that boasted some of the best spinners in the world and could count on the support of tens of thousands of vociferous fans who would fill the stadia.

Greig made good use of his experience from his previous tour and consciously set out to build a rapport with the Indian crowd, for instance, playing 'dead' when loud firecrackers went off in the ground.

Greig rated the win at Calcutta, when he scored 103 on a broken pitch, and struggling with a stomach bug, in front of 100,000 Indian fans, as the finest moment of his career.

After a brief sojourn in Sri Lanka, Greig's team arrived in Australia in March 1977 to prepare for a unique moment in the game's history.

Greig, recognising the spirit of the fixture, had his team play positively, and the match was still in the balance late on the last day before Australia won by 45 runs.

Greig had played well in the match (18 and 41, two wickets and four catches) and he left an open letter with a newspaper thanking the people of Melbourne for their support.

Just weeks before, he had signed a contract with the owner of the Nine Network in Australia, Kerry Packer, to play cricket in a series that would take place during the next Australian summer.

His condition became public during the Packer furore, when a number of commentators questioned his judgement in the matter and speculated that epilepsy impaired his ability to make decisions.

During the 2006 Ashes Perth Test, on commenting on the need for England's Steve Harmison to intimidate Australia's number 11 Glenn McGrath, Greig indicated the need to "Touch him up, before rolling him over".

[35] Greig commentated for Channel Four in the United Kingdom, the SABC when making occasional trips home, and for Sky Sports' coverage of England's 2012 tour of Sri Lanka.

"[36] In 1999, Greig was involved in a controversy when, in a match at the North Sydney Oval, the camera zoomed onto a white, Caucasian man and an Asian woman in a marriage ceremony at a nearby church.

[41] On 26 June 2012, Greig delivered the MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture and criticised the BCCI for misuse of powers and money and continuously rejecting the ICC's call for universal acceptance of the Umpire Decision Review System.

A thinly veiled fictionalised version of Greig as a TV pundit living a rockstar lifestyle behind the scenes appeared in the Gratiaen-, Commonwealth-, and DSC South Asian Literature prize–winning novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka.

[7] He underwent an operation for the cancer in November, and the same month he told fellow commentator Mark Nicholas during an interview broadcast by the Nine Network that "It's not good.