HUW TURBERVILL: England expected fireworks from Australia's quick with the ball, but didn’t think he would provide them with his bat instead.
“Dennis Lillee played a magnificent cover drive and there was this awful noise. Bonk! He walked halfway back to the pavilion and then hurled the bat into the air like a helicopter. We all fell to the floor, crying with laughter.”
England agreed to make a rapid return to Australia just a year after their last tour there – on the proviso that the Ashes would not be at stake – and came face to face with Lillee, who had missed 24 official Tests after his two-year spell in Packer cricket.
England expected fireworks from him with the ball on their 1979/80 trip to Australia but didn’t think he would provide them with his bat instead.
A friend had persuaded him that an aluminium bat could be an innovation for cricket, after seeing how metal baseball bats had become popular in the United States.
So Lillee gave his new ‘Combat’ an outing in the previous Test, against West Indies at Brisbane. No one seemed to notice, though, for he lasted only seven balls before being dismissed for a duck.
Now he was using it against England at the start of day two of the first Test at the Waca in Perth, and they did notice.
He drove the third ball of the morning through the covers for three runs, as recounted in John Lever’s quote above, and it should have gone for four. The bowler, Ian Botham, and his captain, Mike Brearley, protested to umpires Max O’Connell and Donald Weser. “I didn’t even know what it was to start with,” said Brearley. “It just sounded like an odd, old bat that made a funny noise.”
Bob Willis agreed with his captain’s decision to complain. “Mike decided – quite rightly – that the bat was damaging the ball,” he said. “It wasn’t ripping it to shreds or anything, just bruising the surface.”
Allan Border found form against England having struggled against India
Lillee was told the ‘Combat’ would have to be retired, and he did not take kindly to the instruction. Play was held up for 10 minutes, and Australia’s 12th man, Rodney Hogg, was sent out by his captain, Greg Chappell, armed with wooden alternatives. “I could see myself on national television, before a packed ground, and Dennis hitting me between the eyes with his metal bat,” said Hogg.
“I told him to buzz off,” said Lillee. “Then Greg came out, grabbed the bat off Hoggy and marched towards me. I knew I was in trouble. Greg wouldn’t allow me to use that bat, for the sake of good relations and the game itself.
“I’d checked with the authorities before I played at Brisbane and they told me that there was nothing in the Laws to say I couldn’t use it. The bat was covered with enamel and our tests showed it did not damage the ball. That bat was not designed or made for first-class cricket. At half the price of a willow bat, we thought it would be useful for schools’ cricket, nets and for underdeveloped countries. People have asked me why I used it in a Test – it was a marketing ploy. I’m not ashamed of that. We wanted the bat to get some exposure for Christmas sales. Mike Brearley stuck his nose in when he shouldn’t have.”
That charge was refuted by Brearley, who said: “That bat had made more of a mess of the new ball than an ordinary one would. It was a huge tantrum on Lillee’s part.”
Lillee hurled the bat about 20 metres, as Geoff Miller recalled for me: “It landed about three yards from me. I have talked to him about it since. He was very disappointed that he wasn’t allowed to use it as he now has a garage full of aluminium bats. It made a clang, and the ball didn’t go very far. It was just a gimmick.”
After his anger had subsided, Lillee reflected: “I now hold the record for throwing an aluminium bat the furthest in a Test, and I know it will stand forever. Greg admitted later that he used the situation to wind me up, knowing I would be bowling soon afterwards.
“I regret now holding a Test match up for so long, but at the time I was determined I was in the right and I was being set up. At the end of the game, I got each side to sign the bat, and Mike Brearley wrote, ‘Good luck with the sales’. But we didn’t sell a single bat because they were banned.”
Lever was still laughing about the incident more than 30 years later. “The idea was quite good,” he said. “These bats did not break as easily as wooden ones, according to the theory, and it was a way of getting cheap bats into schools.
Tony Grieg was part of the TV coverage
“We said to the umpire that we thought that the bat had damaged the ball. We lodged a complaint, but it was slightly tongue in cheek – we weren’t too bothered.”
Lillee was slated in the media, with Bobby Simpson saying he had “breached perhaps the most sacred code among cricketers by which the captain basically runs the team”. He was severely reprimanded by the Australian Board, and, in 1980, the Law was changed, decreeing that the bat ‘shall be made of wood’.
Maybe England should not have riled Lillee so early in the three-Test series, in which Australia’s big names returned. He took 23 wickets at 16 apiece as his side won 3-0.
Graham Gooch described the trip as a sort of ‘kiss-and-make-up’ healing of the Packer rift after peace had broken out in April and May of 1979. The Australian public had become sick of the civil war, seeing both the official side lose the Ashes and the Packer side outgunned by West Indies and World XIs.
The Australian Board and Packer were losing money, but the television tycoon was content with developments. He had won his television deal and sole rights for marketing international cricket in Australia for 10 years. The players were also delighted with their improved terms. “We were happy to be back,” said Chappell. “World Series Cricket had proved a point and we were getting a little bit of respect.”
Lever also confirmed: “We were not getting a huge amount more – a bit. We were paid £1,000 a Test now.” [Mike Denness’s side were paid £3,000 for the entire six-month tour five years earlier]. It caused rifts in county cricket, though. Not a lot filtered through to the county game.”
England had been reluctant to tour Australia for a second winter in a row but agreed to support their counterparts.
However, MCC refused to allow the urn to be contested, feeling that it was their right to defend them on home territory in 1981 and that Australia would be presented with an unfair advantage by having a second chance to retrieve them so soon.
Mike Brearley continued to struggle for form but had the backing of the team
“I found that hard to understand as we had already agreed to return that winter at the behest of the Australians,” said Lever. “I suppose we had given in on so much already that it was our way of digging our heels in.”
Bob Taylor, said: “It was wrong not to play for the Ashes. It was a Test series against Australia, so they should have been up for grabs.”
The decision annoyed the Australians, with Kim Hughes arguing: “It was small-minded, narrow-minded and not within the spirit of the game. But, you know, that was the Poms.” He revealed that one of the Australians bought a trophy from a sports shop for ‘10 or 15 bucks’ and they called it ‘Ernie’.
India had been due to tour Australia that winter but were made to wait. Instead, England and West Indies played alternate Tests. Clive Lloyd’s men provided Australia’s opposition for the first, third and fifth Tests of the summer at Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide, winning 2-0, while Brearley’s team played the second, fourth and sixth at Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. With a lengthy triangular one-day tournament also included, 42 days of international cricket were played in two months, which was quite tough for Brearley, who was approaching his 38th birthday. It was a curious, complicated format and at the end of it all, England tour manager Alec Bedser gave it the thumbs down. Willis said: “The very strong impression lingered throughout that this was a tour cobbled together very quickly.”
If the England players were seeking downtime on the trip, they might have enjoyed a trip to the cinema to see Mad Max, starring Mel Gibson; or stayed in their hotel rooms to watch the new soap Prisoner (later Prisoner Cell Block H) begin. The Kenny Everett Show and Blake’s 7 were popular British imports, meanwhile.
England had beaten India 1-0 in the Test series in the summer of 1979 and were reasonably confident of defeating Australia, despite the recall of Lillee and his fellow Packer defectors after their still-depleted side had lost 2-0 in India already that winter.
“Ian Botham and myself were more experienced, Alan Knott and Derek Underwood were back from their World Series spells, and all in all we thought we had a good side,” wrote David Gower. “Perhaps Lord’s thought otherwise, as they declined to put up the Ashes for a shortened series, and if so, they were right. We were absolutely hammered.”
Lever admitted: “Now they had Chappell, Rod Marsh and Lillee back, Australia were head and shoulders above us.”
Geoff Boycott sporting an eventually-rejected England ODI kit
Surprisingly England did not face Hogg, the destroyer of 1978/79, in the Tests that winter, after he was entrusted with just six overs, at a cost of 59 runs, against the West Indies at Melbourne. Instead, England faced left-armer Geoff Dymock, from Queensland, and he enjoyed a magnificent match.
Australia had agreed to step into line with the rest of the world that winter and introduced six-ball overs into their home Tests. Lever said: ‘“It kept the game moving quickly. Eight-ball overs were all right if you took a wicket early on but were a curse if you had been hit for a four at the start.”
England had beaten Australia twice in one-day internationals in the build-up to Perth, but they could not maintain this superiority.
Brearley won the toss and put Australia in – only once before had an England captain won a Test in Australia when asking the opposition to bat first, at Melbourne in 1911/12 – and so the sequence continued, with Australia triumphing by 138 runs.
Botham bowled brilliantly, taking 6 for 78, but Hughes resisted superbly until he fell to Underwood one short of a century in Australia’s total of 244. The series was notable for its 90s.
Lillee then took out his frustration after the bat fiasco on openers Derek Randall and Geoff Boycott, removing them for ducks. He also dismissed Brearley for 64, one of his better Test innings, to pass 100 wickets against England. He finished with figures of 4 for 73, while Jeff Thomson also took his 150th Test wicket when he had Miller caught, as England made 228.
Australia then built an imposing lead with a second-innings total of 337, thanks to Allan Border’s 115. During that innings, he became the quickest Australian to 1,000 Test runs, in 354 days, although he had to retire on 109 after being hit in the face trying to hook debutant Graham Dilley. Botham provided some warning of what Australians could expect in 1981 by taking match figures of 11 for 176. Dymock, though, destroyed England’s hopes of saving the game, and they slumped to 215 all out, with 20 overs remaining, despite Boycott making an unbeaten 99, only the fourth time an England batsman had carried his bat.
As Willis remembered, he should have reached three figures: “Geoffrey, on 97, clipped one off his legs for what should have been an easy three for his hundred. But after two runs I held my hand up and sent him back because I would then have been facing Lillee and that wasn’t the plan.”
However, Boycott was soon earning the scorn of some of his team-mates. Although he admired Brearley’s leadership skills, the pair clashed ahead of the next Test at Sydney in England’s first Test of the 1980s. “What seemed to grate on Geoffrey,” wrote Gooch, “was that Mike never once asked him, the ‘master’, for the tiniest piece of advice about batting technique (when it could have been rewarding for Brearley had he done so),” wrote Gooch.
“One famous clash of wills, in which Brearley famously prevailed, occurred just before the Sydney Test. It was a wet wicket and batting was going to be uncomfortable, certainly against Lillee, Dymock and Len Pascoe. At the team dinner, Geoffrey appears wearing this sort of surgical scarf wrapped around his neck and announces that, sorry, he’s ricked his neck playing golf and cannot play the next day. ‘Aye-oop’, chorus all the lads, mocking, “You’re kidding, it’s a damp and dodgy pitch and you’re funking it, aren’t you?” And all of us, to a man, took up our white-cloth napkins from the dinner table and would them round our own necks, sending him up rotten.
“But Brearley didn’t get the joke. He suddenly went ‘spare’ with Boycott: ‘You’re in! You’re in! You’re playing and that’s all there is to it!’ He didn’t have a lot of trouble moving about and jolting his neck when Lillee and Co started peppering him with bumpers.”
Botham was furious. “His reluctance to put himself in the firing line almost provoked the normally mild-mannered Mike Brearley into thumping him,” he wrote. “As far as many of us were concerned, that was the last straw. If Boycs was going to pick and choose his games, he could go and play with himself. I for one didn’t go out of my way to talk to him again on that trip.”
The start of the Sydney Test on January 4 was delayed by three-and-a-half hours because of rain (it had been pouring for three days), but Australia still won by six wickets on the fourth afternoon.
Giving the groundstaff a day off to celebrate the New Year was a mistake, for the pitch was in "a terrible state", according to Botham, who said: “It didn’t take a genius to work out it was going to be a quick flyer.” He was critical of most of the pitches he encountered in 1978/79 and 1979/80, bemoaning the lack of bounce and pace, and arguing that they were poor for batting.
Chappell protested that conditions were not fit, but realised, when he won the toss, that Australia would have a huge advantage by being able to bat last on a drying wicket. Both teams struggled in their first innings. England made only 123, Lillee taking 4 for 40 and Dymock 4 for 42. Australia then replied with 145, Ian Chappell returning after an absence of almost four years to top-score with 42 and complete 2,000 runs against England, and Botham recording figures of 4 for 29.
Then it was Gower’s turn to miss out on a hundred, ending on 98 not out as England made 237. Chappell also struck 98 not out – after both men had also scored three in the first innings – as Australia eased home by six wickets.
David Gower was among those to register a score in the 90s
England struggled again in the third Test at Melbourne, losing by eight wickets with 19.2 overs to spare.
This time it was Gooch’s turn to miss out on three figures, run out in foolhardy fashion for 99. “It was the last ball before tea [on day one],” wrote Gooch. “Pascoe bowled it. I must admit to the nervous 90s. I pushed towards mid-on. I obviously thought it was travelling faster than it was. I called and set off. Hughes came round and fielded it, and I knew I was struggling. I was out by six inches. Ian Chappell looked at me as though I had a screw loose. ‘What? Don’t you like scoring centuries or something?’ he said.”
England’s total of 306 was respectable, but once again it was Lillee who reined them in, taking 6 for 60, becoming the fifth Australian to 200 Test wickets. Although his pace had diminished by now, he had added to his repertoire, bowling formidable leg-cutters (although to his frustration he could never perfect an off-cutter).
Australia then assumed control, scoring 477, with Greg Chappell hitting 114. Finally, an Englishman made it past 100, Botham scoring 119 not out, his first century against Australia, but he received scant support, and the hosts knocked off the 103 they needed pretty quickly.
Chappell averaged a formidable 79 in the series, brother Ian 50 and Border 49.
The tourists’ experiment of opening with Randall had been a failure, while Peter Willey made only 35 runs in six Test innings.
Gower also had a disappointing tour, and he wrote: “Lillee bowled exceptionally well in that series, and of all the great fast bowlers I’ve faced – Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Richard Hadlee and Malcolm Marshall – I would have to place Lillee as the best.
“What I particularly liked about the Australians of that era was that what happened on the field mattered not a jot off it. You could be smacked in the ribs at five minutes to six, and at five past the first two people into the dressing room to apply a cold beer to the bruise (plus a few more internally) would be Lillee and Marsh.”
Gower was already being urged to approach the game more seriously. with Boycott recounting a story from the tour: “Gower is not serious for very long and always there is the flip side to his character lurking just below the surface.
"Everyone was expected to be punctual at team meetings. As an extra incentive, we levied fines at one pound per minute for anyone who turned up late and in Sydney Gower became a victim of the system. When he did arrive he was casual as ever and attempted to make a joke of an apology. Brearley cut him down to size very simply and quickly in front of everyone. Gower could not resist trying to be funny and it did not go down too well with the captain when the rest of us had been kept waiting.”
Despite the 3-0 Test defeat, Brearley’s reputation with his players remained intact, and he averaged 34 in the series (against an overall Test average of 22). “Willis called him Scagglethorpe Singh Brearley – Scagglethorpe because he was born in Yorkshire, and Singh because he was completely at home with India and its people,” Lever said. “He turned up as Mahatma Gandhi at the Christmas party. He had that same serenity about him. I only ever saw him lose his temper a couple of times. He could be tough, though…”
Rob Marsh in action during the one-day series
Woven around the six Tests was the limited-overs series involving the same three sides – the grandly entitled World Series Cricket. On television, it was dubbed as a ‘Three-way Battle of the Cricket Gods’, and home fans were urged to sing, ‘C’mon Aussie, C’mon, C’mon’.
Australia now wore yellow and black stripes down the sides of their white shirts and trousers, while West Indies had grey and maroon stripes, but England once again refused to play ball and kept their whites (although they did use black pads). “There was still a reluctance to embrace the Packer innovations,” said Willis. “We had a rather buttoned-up board and the chairman of selectors and tour manager was Alec, who was pretty conservative.”
Lever said: “There’s no denying Packer was a visionary – everything he introduced came off, and a lot of good came out of it. We now had white balls, black sightscreens, night matches, universal use of helmets and heavy advertising. It was weird, yet exciting.”
There were 12 group games, with England winning all four of their matches against Australia, in stark contrast to their fortunes in the Tests. Boycott – smarting after being left out of England’s opening one-day international against West Indies at Sydney – made 105 and 86 in two of those wins at the same venue. “Boycs would run down the wicket and smash it over the top in the first over,” said Lever. “We’d never seen him do that before!”
England also beat West Indies once, by two runs in a match notable for Brearley’s field setting off the final ball: three was needed and everyone, including the wicketkeeper, was sent to the boundary. WSC rules were soon adapted to incorporate a 30-yard fielding circle. England also lost twice to a side inspired by the brilliance of Viv Richards, while a fourth encounter was abandoned without a ball bowled.
West Indies won the first match of the final against England by two runs at Melbourne and sealed the finals series by eight wickets at Sydney. The third match was redundant and not played – again, quite an innovation and unlikely to happen in England. Think of the lost revenue.
Some spectators became carried away amid all the hype, however, and Brearley was still being abused. The Australian team manager, John Edwards, even issued a statement saying the offenders made him ashamed to be an Australian.
Greg Chappell said: “Let’s be realistic. One of the great sports of Australia is to have a go at the Poms. I think it was nothing more than a mark of the times. Socially Australia was changing a great deal, the country was moving on rapidly and the crowds simply reflected that.”
Botham was distinctly unimpressed, though. “I must say I’m surprised and upset by the ‘anti-Pom’ feeling which exists, especially off the field among the spectators,” he wrote. “I don’t think I could take that for very long. Even young teenagers seem to get caught up in that feeling and were vicious and rude in their language.”
Unforgettably, he was to direct some of that anger at Australia when they returned to England in the summer of 1981.
Our coverage of the Ashes is brought to you in association with Cricket 22.
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