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Dennis Lillee: The bowler Australia was meant to have

Roar Rookie
28th September, 2016
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Dennis Lillee was a star of the Centenary Test. (Image: Flickr/zoonabar CC BY-SA 2.0)
Roar Rookie
28th September, 2016
21

The Boxing Day when Dennis Lillee foiled Viv Richards with the last ball of play was listened in gardens, on beaches, and in cars with the windows all the way down and the sound all the way up.

It’d be cheating to say we all felt he’d do it. Maybe the kids drumming the MCG signage felt it. Maybe thousands more at the ground felt it.

The ball has lasted in everyone’s memories precisely because it was so unlikely. He had already bowled well, but there was a generosity, an extravagance in Lillee’s surging spells.

The West Indies, for once, were vulnerable: 3 for 10.

Picture it. Lillee sweeps in, one combatant moving towards another in a coliseum. Hordes bay as the distance between them closes. Adrenaline surging, Lillee delivers some kind of sorcery: a slower inswinger, dipping late, clipping the inside-edge of the sport’s undisputed champ, its Roman-nosed titan prince. For a nanosecond, Vivian Richards is stunned. Lillee punches sky and flows from the arena flocked with teammates. Viv chews, trailing behind. Years later he will write, ‘Dennis Lillee is always at you.’

What did Dennis Lillee epitomise?

The free-spiritedness and gusto we liked to believe characterised us? The convicts’ brazen rise from the ashes made absolute? A country’s sporting fantasy in the flesh?

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Probably nothing of the kind, not if you prefer the firm footing of facts over fancy.

Dennis Keith Lillee, as Ian Chappell sometimes refers to him, was an extraordinary fast-bowler in an extraordinary time for the game; as skilful as any before or since. If, as is said, he was wayward in his early days, by twilight he was a maestro; all shape and ploy and dextrous control.

More than any of that, he was beautiful to watch.

The natural world brimmed and leapt in Dennis Lillee. The run-up was a tiger’s run at prey. The flaunted chest hair was a sign of the times, but it was timeless too.

Lillee seemed so natural in the blistering sun and Indian Ocean breezes.

One of my early memories is sitting close to the screen entranced by a man running in profile, arched, fiercely absorbed. Our loungeroom latch hangs open, admitting cicada score. The man is running faster. A pendant bobs, bounces and thrashes.

Dennis Lillee had as much presence as any superstar of the era: Borg with his chilled racket; John Travolta and his boogie shoes; Ace Frehley and his smoking guitar. Lillee could fill a stadium and keep it filled and when he was occasionally routed, it took a person of massive chutzpah to make it happen.

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Cue Ian Botham, 1981.

At Old Trafford Lillee had his mojo dented when the brawny, brilliantly creative and charismatic Englishman clubbed him continually: six over long leg, six over deep square leg, over mid-off. Lillee took it with grace; there was nothing to be done against the typhoon which was Botham in full flight.

As Australian boys of eleven and nine, my brother and I watched Botham’s innings on a TV in Ireland. We were in a cricket club lounge with 22 Irishmen in their whites, one of whom was an uncle. Play was washed out. Rain teemed outside: all eyes were on the TV. As Botham cut loose on Alderman, Lawson and Lillee, our lemon squashes soured; nobody hit Dennis Lillee back over his head. Not even Barry Richards for The Rest of the World had managed it.

I can still see Lillee on that raised TV, his air darkening, his frazzled bald patch showing him as some sort of worn-down king eagle the other birds had no reason to fear anymore. It should be noted he bowled 46 overs in the innings at an overall economy rate of 2.9 and claimed 41 wickets that series. It could also be mentioned that his most memorable ball – the Richards ball – was in the pipeline.

Writing off champions: some of us start younger than others. We’ve all dabbled in it, at any rate. Champions are always being written off. The irony is it’s often because they’ve set themselves such benchmarks.

As early as 1979, I heard one man at a barbeque say to another, as he poured from a longneck, “Lillee’s lost a yard or two I reckon. Two or three years ago if he got belted for four, next ball was LBW or bowled.” That harmless exaggeration does Lillee justice in a way – he was unusually combative, unusually proud.

The name became synonymous with a done deed, with drama. Remember his last ball? Remember that?

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Lille claimed a wicket, LBW, with his last ever ball. He was over and out with a trademark shout.

Like Gough Whitlam or Germaine Greer or Paul Hogan, it’s as if Dennis Lillee was meant to happen to us.

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