– but it emphasised that Dennis just could not resist a skirmish.
He was close to wearing Javed’s bat as a cravat in that incident, and might have done but for umpire Tony Crafter’s positioning between the two men. In the end the only damage done was to Lillee’s pocket – he was fined $120 and banned for two matches.
Whichever way you dress it up, a number of us would live to regret Greigy’s bravado. Some of my own words came back to haunt me, too. When I look back I really wish I hadn’t offered the wisecrack that I could play Thomson with my knob end. Obviously I never meant it!
Being struck amidships is not something you forget. There are few things that leave me speechless but that was one of them, and even blows down below from other bowlers cannot compare to one from Thommo. My old mate Mike Selvey did double me over in a county match at Lord’s once, so I thought it only right to pop into the Middlesex dressing room after play to allay fears he might have done any serious damage.
‘Don’t worry, Selve,’ I grinned. ‘Compared to Thommo, you were a pleasure.’
Verbals played their part in that 1974–75 series but mainly away from the ground, believe it or not. Every evening Australian television seemed to be screening interviews with one Aussie player or another in which they would spell out exactly how they were going to crush us Poms. The most memorable was when Thommo came on one night on the eve of the first Test and matter-of-factly exclaimed: ‘I like to see blood on the pitch.’ We were in a team meeting and it is fair to say there was the odd intake of breath as he declared a preference for hitting opponents rather than getting them out.
As an opening batsman I always liked to keep relations with those hurling that leather sphere down at me at the speed of light on an even keel. Dennis Amiss and I tried to maintain a certain friendliness for self-preservation as much as anything else. So I was at odds with the response drawn when Lillee walked into bat one day and got struck on the elbow by a Greig bouncer first ball. ‘Well bowled, give him another,’ squawked Keith Fletcher from gully.
I cringed as Lillee turned 90 degrees and retaliated with: ‘It’ll be your f***ing turn soon!’ Funnily enough, Fletch was given a right working over when he came in. He would have been left in no doubt what lay in store for him, though, following another episode of the Dennis Lillee TV Show that evening. During an interview on the news, he was asked about the progress of the match, and to assess the position Australia found themselves in – most probably answering something such as ‘we’ll bloody crush ’em’ – before finally being quizzed on what the opposition were like.
‘The Poms are a good set of blokes, I get on with all of ’em,’ he said, before looking right into the camera lens. ‘Except that little weasel Fletcher, that is. I know you’re watching, Fletcher, and you might as well know I am going to sort you out tomorrow.’
Fletch would have been forgiven for wishing that tomorrow had never come as Lillee roared into him next day. Picture the scene as Fletch awaited his punishment – no helmet, no visor, no body armour. Just the MCC navy blue cap sat on the top of his head as Lillee sent down the full artillery. Bouncer after bouncer was fended off or dodged in expert fashion until one short one failed to get up as much as the rest and finally located its target, hitting him straight on the head, flooring our number five batsman in the process, and sending the ball bouncing to Ross Edwards at cover.
‘Blimey, he’s only gone and knocked St George off his ’orse,’ gasped Geoff Arnold, in reference to the emblem on the front of the MCC caps, as we sat in the dressing room watching the drama unfold.
One of the weird things in cricket is seeing the pseudo-pleasure people get when a team-mate gets sconned. Sounds vindictive, doesn’t it? But it’s not, really. It’s similar to self-preservation. Quite simply, if someone else is being hit, you’re thankful. Because it means it’s not you.
I’ve never met anyone who likes being hit by a cricket ball. One bloke came close to challenging that theory, actually, although like may still be too strong a word. A certain Brian Close used to chest balls down like a brick outhouse of a centre-half. Trouble was these leather balls were made for cricket not football and were being propelled down the pitch by some of the planet’s most hostile fast bowlers.
The most famous Close combat came in 1976 when, at the age of 45, he stood up to those West Indies firebrands Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel and Andy Roberts for the best part of three hours in a Test match at Old Trafford. It was in the second innings, in a hopeless cause, and proved to be the last of his England career, but what bravery this bloke showed.
Talk about bulldog spirit. Brian was as tough as old boots, and would literally put his body on the line if he thought doing so would enhance the chances of winning the game. And that was not limited to him wearing a few bouncers while batting, either. Here was a man who seemed to have no limit to his pain threshold, one who was brave enough to offer himself up as a human ricochet during that series against the Windies. Legend has it that during that series defeat, Close came up with an unusual and rather masochistic tactic in search of a wicket for England.
‘I will field at short-leg when Derek Underwood is bowling to Clive Lloyd,’ he announced at a team meeting. ‘When Lloyd sweeps, the ball will hit me, and the other close-in fielders can catch the rebounds.’ If you know anything of the man, you will realise he was deadly serious.
Some lads talk a better game than they play. Back in 1989, a number of years after I had retired from first-class cricket, I was still playing for my beloved Accrington in the Lancashire League. We reached the semi-final stage of the Worsley Cup and were drawn away at Todmorden, whose overseas professional at the time was the Sri Lankan all-rounder Ravi Ratnayeke.
He was a handy cricketer was Ratnayeke but had hardly pulled up any trees in the league that summer and we knew it. He was certainly not a player to put the wind up us. So we remained unperturbed about him coming across our path. However, when we arrived at Centre Vale in late morning, Ravi was nowhere to be seen.
His absence was explained a few minutes later when a beanpole West Indian strolled across the ground as our lads knocked up. There was a lot of mouthing of ‘who’s that?’ around our group as he sauntered past with his kit. I had clocked him a long way off. Huge, supremely athletic, he was the new kid on the block as far as fast bowling in the Caribbean went. It was Ian Bishop, who had made his Test debut within the previous 12 months.
It turned out that, with Ratnayeke injured, Todmorden had hired Bishop from Derbyshire for the day. Now as business transactions go, this was a fairly impressive one.
Bishop flew in to the crease and got the ball through at a fair old lick, but our opening pair of Nick Marsh and Andrew Barker, elder brother of Warwickshire’s left-arm swing bowler Keith Barker, resisted manfully to keep him at bay. Todmorden did not make a breakthrough until we had 63 on the board, in fact, and that put our wicketkeeper Billy Rawstron on the verge of going in.
Billy was our number four and confident enough to declare in the privacy of our own dressing room that, in his estimable opinion, this 21-year-old Adonis from Trinidad was not as quick as some others were making out. He even shunned the notion of wearing a helmet, a ploy I believed was unwise when confronted with a paceman of Bishop’s velocity. He upped the ante by declaring if his West Indian adversary had the audacity to bounce him, he would be hooking. Oh dear, Billy.
At 71 for two, it was time for Billy’s boasts to be put to the test. We’d heard the theory; now it was going to be put into practice.
You have probably guessed by this point that our hero was going to get the trouble he was asking for. Some lads reckon the cricket gods will not allow you to get away
