Chris Ryan spoke to Tony Greig, a fine England captain, who is uncelebrated and still unforgiven Tony Greig looks delighted. I have just told him that of all the allrounders to achieve the double of 1000 Test runs and 100 wickets he is the only one to do so with a batting average above 40 and a bowling average below 33. Not even Garry Sobers managed that.

"Run that by me again," he says, flicking through one of Bill Frindall's old scorebooks with one hand, frantically scribbling down notes with the other. "Wait till I see Botham next time. I never knew about this."

For someone who claimed 15 minutes earlier that "I don't take much notice of results" Greig seems a fraction too pleased with himself. I broach the sensitive topic of his less than Sobers-like performances during World Series Cricket. Might it be that he departed the Test stage at exactly the right time?

He thinks about this. "Well," he says at last, "let's have a look." He returns to Frindall and proceeds to read aloud his scores, innings by innings, from the 1977 Ashes series – his final act as an England player – a 91 at Lord's, 76 at Manchester. "Not too bad so far, mate." His voice trails off along with his contributions: 11, 0, 43. "We won by an innings and 85." He arrives at his 58th and last Test and stops. His bright eyes flicker a little. He draws his lips in, then puffs them out. "Nought. Caught Bright, bowled Malone. What a bloody death that would have been."

That was on August 26, 1977. England had regained the Ashes but Greig, having secretly signed up most of the game's superstars to join Kerry Packer's breakaway circuit, was the most hated man in world cricket. Twenty-five years later he no longer holds that title – "you're not comparing Hansie Cronje with me, are you?" – and England no longer hold the Ashes. Yet in some ways not a lot has changed. Greig has simply gone from being a loathed figure to a forgotten figure, the man English cricket tried to Tippex out of its history.

"Getting back to the issue," he continues, "the issue being do I feel any resentment about the fact that they seem to have tried to ignore me a bit? Well, yes. The truth is yes. So there's been a bit of a victory for some of those guys who tried to keep the pot boiling and treated me as a traitor. I just don't see it that way at all."

English cricket, mortified by an unhappy present, often prefers to revel in a less painful past. Yet Greig is never celebrated in the way a Botham, a Brearley or even a Jardine is. Few men in history, however, have shaped the modern game like Greig has. At 6ft 7ins he was the tallest man to play for England. He swung matches as a seamer and an offspinner, as a slasher and a stonewaller. He was a magnificent fielder too: his ratio of 87 catches from 58 Tests outstrips even Mark Waugh. He took over an England side mid-series that had lost six of their last eight Tests against Australia, and promptly led them to three straight draws. He subsequently guided them to a series victory in India, the first England captain to manage that in 43 years.

His raised-bat stance upset the purists but quickly became fashionable. He was one of the first players to favour helmets. He is credited with halting the practice among English batsmen of walking. He is also credited, more happily, with devising the one-day game's fielding circle, reckoned by his old Channel 9 commentary pal Richie Benaud to be "quite the best innovation" to come out of World Series Cricket.

Then there is his impact on media sophistication. It is difficult nowadays to remember a time before pre-match pitch reports and post-match interviews. Greig popularised both.

Improved player earnings, though, were his and Packer's greatest legacy. Greig used to speak of becoming the world's first millionaire cricketer; millionaire status is now a moderate goal for any reasonably talented player. More money, more matches, more TV coverage – the curses of World Series Cricket – are now considered blessings. Yet Greig says in England he has never been forgiven.

"It's the nature of the conservative Englishman," he says. "Once they perceive you to be a bit of a villain that's it, you're a villain. Not many people have actually said: `You were right, I was wrong'." Not that any of this riles him too much these days, or at least that's what he says. And it is hard not to believe him: he could still, as Bob Willis once wrote, "charm the birds from the trees".

But it must have been tough being Greig when the Packer story broke. Crowds booed him, committee men ignored him, journalists misquoted him. As a gangly South African who moved to England at 20 to play for Sussex, Greig had caused enough of a stir with his hardball leadership style; he once ran out Alvin Kallicharran as the batsman headed innocently for the pavilion at the end of a day's play. His matiness with Packer confirmed people's worst fears.

If there was a mildly racist element to some of the reporting, Greig says he brought it on himself when he pledged to make the 1976 West Indians "grovel" – a particularly nasty verb when directed towards a group of black men out of a white South African's mouth. "That was just silly," he says now. "I could have used hundreds of different words."

Still, it hardly justified the venom of journalists such as John Woodcock, the respected Times correspondent, who reminded his readers that Greig was English "only by adoption. It is not the same thing as being English through and through." That was written on the day Greig was sacked as captain. He says it never worried him. "If being an Englishman through and through is being like Woodcock, then thank Christ I'm not. Woodcock couldn't have given a stuff about the plight of the average cricketer."

Then there was Henry Blofeld's curious diagnosis that Greig's epilepsy – until then a media secret – might have triggered his rasher acts. "That's about as bad as it gets," says Greig. "But he has apologised, and sincerely too. I actually like Blowers."

Most distressing of all was the criticism from the late Jim Swanton, who had been one of Greig's fondest backers. Then World Series Cricket happened. Their friendship, like so many, was never the same again. "I remember seeing him at the Sandy Lane Hotel [in Barbados] one morning," Greig recalls. "I said: `Look, I'd love to talk to you. There's nothing in the world I'd like to do more.' "And he said: `We must do that.' But it never happened. I probably would have been wasting my time anyway. I'd like to think I could have got him to listen long enough to understand our side of the story but he would have just talked about why we should never have let Packer in and how bad the one-day game is."

English cricket might not think about Tony Greig very often these days but Tony Greig still thinks about English cricket. He believes Lord MacLaurin, the ECB chairman, missed a trick by pursuing impossible structural reform of the counties instead of pumping cash into amateur cricket. Greig told him as much too: "He didn't seem to be listening."

And Greig seems resentful about not being offered a commentary gig with Channel 4. He was too old, too opinionated, apparently. "One or two of them didn't have the balls to include me in their team. I see Michael Slater has rushed across there again. What's he got to do with English cricket? I think I could have put a bit back, like we have done in Australia."

Put a bit back? But he is only a commentator, surely? "The way Adam Gilchrist plays doesn't just happen," Greig explains. "It's because as a little boy he'd been listening to guys like us, saying you've got to play horizontal-bat shots, you've got to pull and cut, you've got to take the initiative. Without being too big-headed about it, I think what we've done with television has been fantastic for Australian cricket."

We are sitting high above Sydney in Greig's ninth-floor office – "bang in the middle" of the city, as he would say if he was in the commentary box. Framed pictures of Victor Trumper, Shane Warne, Joe Darling's 1902 Australians and Don Bradman's 1948 Invincibles cover every inch of wall. As interior decoration goes it is what you would expect from an Australian cricket nut with the money to buy the toys he wants – not a former England captain.

On the subject of former England captains Greig thinks Ray Illingworth was "miles better" than Mike Brearley, who was a "very special character" that got lucky. "He wasn't any different to the rest of us. When I was there he stood at slip, threw a few ideas around and most of the things he did we all agreed should have been done." Not that Greig himself claims to be a masterful leader. Too defensive, he says. He would be more like Ian Chappell if he could do it all again.

He is sorry about the clandestine nature of his early work for Packer but that was how his new paymaster wanted it. He would have loved to continue captaining England; indeed he had just started to get the hang of it with that 3-1 victory in India. But the wages were too low. "There was plenty of honour and glory but absolutely no security. It really was a master-servant type of relationship." Besides, he had always wanted to live in Australia. "My kids could not be happier. And I had some great fun with Kerry. I went all round the world with him. I spent almost every evening with him for ten years. There were prime ministers and entrepreneurs; I met so many fantastic people. How could I have got that from England?"

Yes, these are the good times. Greig, now 55, became a father again in March. It is a positive ending to a long-running saga. His second wife, Vivienne, underwent 11 IVF treatments before their first child together, Beau, was born two years ago. Thomas, the latest addition, was a happy IVF-free accident.

There was even the joy of an historical wrong being righted when the MCC offered Greig honorary membership – a status normally bestowed on England captains by right but which the disgraced Greig had long been denied. These days he gets invited to sit for large-scale, MCC-commissioned paintings. He pulls out a copy of one he has cut out of a magazine. It is a sombre, rather stuffy looking illustration of recent England captains. He is staring at it, murmuring. "There's Brearley sitting in the front – Gatting's there too." He seems lost in thought. "I don't think it's that good actually."

There is a sense that the wheel has turned full circle. Greig notes the irony in the fact that the MCC chairman, Robert Alexander QC, is the same Robert Alexander QC who represented Packer's henchmen against the Establishment all those years ago. Greig comments that the players of today "are perhaps getting a bit too greedy". There is an irony there, too, but he does not detect it.

An hour or so after saying goodbye an unwelcome thought intrudes. I consult my own scorebooks and double-check Jacques Kallis's vital statistics: 3,971 runs at 47.27, 117 wickets at 30.07. Best not tell Greigy. He has suffered enough over the years.

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