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Dennis Lillee's summer as a specialist batsman

Roar Guru
10th December, 2014
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Dennis Lillee was a star of the 1975-76 Frank Worrell Trophy. (Zoonabar - Flickr)
Roar Guru
10th December, 2014
6

When Perth Cricket Club offered Dennis Lillee the captain-coach position for the 1973-74 summer, his response was, “Sure, but only as a specialist batsman.”

Dennis Lillee is the greatest fast bowler I have seen.

I know other fast bowlers, like fellow countryman Glenn McGrath, took more wickets at a better strike rate and better economy, but stats don’t always tell the whole story.

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Lillee played at a time of great, mostly attacking batsmen – Barry and Viv Richards, Geoff Boycott, Tony Greig, Clive Lloyd, Gary Sobers, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Sunil Gavaskar, Gundupppa Viswanath, Zaheer Abbas, Majid Khan, Javed Miandad, Glenn Turner, Graeme Pollock and Eddie Barlow.

More importantly, the great fast bowlers who played with and against him in the 70s and 80s acknowledged him as the first among equals. This includes men such as Jeff Thomson, Max Walker, Lenny Pascoe, Rodney Hogg, Ian Botham, John Snow, Bob Willis, Malcom Marshall, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Richard Hadlee, Clive Rice, Imran Khan, Sarfraz Nawaz and Kapil Dev.

In particular, Lillee engaged the crowd. Not only was he a great bowler, but he was an entertainer as well. He was the full package.

In addition to his skill and intelligence, he was incredibly courageous, perhaps recklessly so, pushing his body to the limits of its endurance. In 1973 in the Caribbean, he broke his back, but dragged it through the first Test, wicketless against the West Indies.

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Subsequent x-rays revealed three fractures in his lumber vertebrae. Full rest, recuperation and recovery was required. Playing further first-class cricket was out of the question. Convalescence would be his remedy over the coming summer.

Then the Perth Cricket Club, for whom Lillee had played little over previous summers due to his state and Test duties, had a master-stroke.

They asked Lillee to fill in his spare time by being their captain-coach for the season.

Lillee mulled it over for a few days, then decided to take it on – with the provision that he was picked in every game of the season as a batsman only.

What transpired over that summer in Perth grade cricket was nothing short of extraordinary. Inspiring actually.

Perth had a huge decision to make. Could they afford to play Lillee as a specialist batsman? He hadn’t concentrated on his batting since he had joined the club several seasons before.

Eventually the club took on Lillee as leader and batsman – and got far more than they had bargained for.

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Lillee wasn’t expecting any miracles, either of himself or from the club. Perth had finished 9th of 14 teams the previous season. If he could build on team morale, let the team do its job, and lift Perth into the top half of the comp, that would be satisfactory.

He had no pretensions about what he was going to do with the bat. He had no intention of doing anything at all with the ball. His work around the club had a wonderful effect on the spirit of the players, who threw themselves into every task he put before them.

It was a wonderful year of inspirational leadership, and the benefits to both the club and Lillee himself were sensational. Lillee led the club to the minor premiership, then into the grand final as runners-up.

Perth won the club championship (best over combined four grades). Lillee was named Perth District Cricketer of the Year.

Not least, Lillee ended up leading from the front, both as a batsman and bowler.

Lillee was actually his club’s leading batsman, hitting 654 (highest aggregate of any player from any club) runs at the respectable average of 43.60 and a top score of 98. It just went to show that when Lillee put his mind to something, he gave it his all.

On the bowling front, Lillee ended up with 48 wickets at 15.89 apiece – having bowled the second-most overs in the comp for the second-most wickets!

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This is incredible since Lillee went from not intending to bowl at all, to not intending to bowl before Christmas, to going berserk once he got back into full rhythm.

In the winning semi against Midland-Guildford, Lillee hit 90 and took 5/77. In the losing final against Subiaco, Lillee hit 63 and took 4/85.

As good as Lillee was, sometime Test all-rounder Graeme Watson was the star of the finals. In the winning semi against Scarborough, Watson hit a mighty 180 and took 3/38. In the winning final, he hit 33 and took 5/55.

Watson was the leading batsman in Perth grade cricket (highest average and second-highest aggregate behind Lillee) and had best average of bowlers who took more than 20 wickets (28 at 9.42).

In any other year Watson would have won cricketer of the year. But Lillee trumped him.

Dennis Lillee received many accolades during his career and is rightly revered as the one of the greatest, if not the greatest fast bowler Australia has produced.

His deeds for the Perth club in the 1973/74 Perth grade cricket comp are little known except perhaps by the people who were involved with the local scene back then.

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But it is a story that deserves to be told and recognised on a larger canvas. My thanks to the 1974 Cricketer Annual for providing most of this story.

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