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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
yogesh narayan sharma
Guest
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JMW
Guest
This was a great article Sheek, one of the best I've read. Lillee's courage and determination were inspiring and legendary. Have you read The Miracle Match by Ian Brayshaw? I think the current players are mollycoddled by support staff who are keen to justify their positions. I think if you played and didn't have a sore spot at the end of the day then you couldn't have been competing.
Stumpy
Roar Rookie
The first test I saw live was Adelaide Australia v England Australia Day 75. There was 2 things I wanted to see Lillee and Thomo. As a kid there was nothing that could have beat the thrill. What I got to see was a fighting inning at bat from the Aussies and this bloke with a big fore head bowling spin as fast as some seam bowler named Underwood take 7 for or something like that. I think the Aussies bowled a couple of overs late in the day but we'd left early and came back the next day to see Lillee and Thomo tear them up. I can't remember ever being so excited and invested in a sporting event that I wasn't actually participating in as a player or a coach
Pope Paul VII
Guest
thanks, very interesting. Plenty of drama in those lost uber internationals like the Victory tests, Rest of World matches, Supertests and Rebel tests That don't do the year books and annuals like they used to. Cricketer Annual was my fave.
sheek
Roar Guru
Hi Pope, Re Graeme Watson, he was one of those cricketers who was very good at first-class cricket, but the step up to test cricket was just a tad beyond him. There are many like him. Watson first played for Victoria, where he was called into the Australian team to tour South Africa in 1966/67. He was a direct replacement for Doug Walters, who had been called up for National Service, this being the Vietnam War era. Both were remarkably similar, born in the same year 1945, both were attacking right hand batsmen, useful right arm medium pace bowlers & excellent fielders. But only Walters succeeded at test level. Watson played five tests (three in 1966/67 & two in 1972) without doing much. He also toured NZ with the B team in 1970. In 1971/72 in his only international vs Rest of the World in Melbourne, he was hit on the head by a Tony Greig bouncer & knocked unconscious. For a brief time it was thought his life was in peril, but he made a full recovery. Also in 1971/72, Watson had an unusual dismissal. He hit 145 for WA against Queensland. Watson hit a bump ball into the gully where he thought he had been caught & proceeded to walk off the ground. The fielders hadn't appealed & the umpire hadn't raised his finger & everyone was perplexed by Watson's action. By the time anyone figured what was going on, Watson had disappeared into the dressing room. At the end of the day the umpires advised Watson his dismissal would be recored as 'retired OUT' & there it is in the Australian Cricket Yearbook! Graeme Watson was a good cricketer, just short of top drawer.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
Well done Sheeky. 1974/75 was the first season I started to cotton on to cricket D K was the man, even if Thommo took more wickets, Lillee captured the imagination. I was just too young to remember the earlier Watto though. I've heard lots about his dynamism since. Never quite nailed it at test level. Why was that do you reckon?