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Golden Boy
Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket
By Christian Ryan Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2009 Christian Ryan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74269-151-0
CHAPTER 1
'Let Him Stew'
DENNIS LILLEE IS concise with his words and passionate about the Australian XI. Both qualities were evident a year after his retirement when he was asked about his legacy. Would he, wondered the journalist from Australian Cricket, go down as 'a Ned Kelly anti-hero' or 'a pure sporting legend in the Bradman mould'?
'If I am remembered,' replied Lillee, 'as someone who gave a hundred per cent at all times, I don't care what else I am remembered for.' In the two decades since, his legend taller and leg-cutter retrospectively deadlier with every passing summer, he has got his wish. Getting what he wishes is a third characteristic of Lillee's.
His wicketkeeping pal Rodney Marsh can be even more concise. Sometimes Marsh's concision turns into gruffness. 'The team is the thing and to devote yourself anything less than one hundred per cent to that team is tantamount to treason,' Marsh once wrote. Should anyone dare accuse him otherwise — 'I'd like to meet the idiot and personally shove the proposition down his throat or up some other orifice.'
Giving a hundred per cent is the most quoted yet least quantifiable of cricket's prefabricated parrot phrases. It is almost meaningless — a hundred per cent of what? — and was junked anew by Matthew Hayden's twenty-first century pledge of 'one billion per cent' support for Ricky Ponting. It is also immeasurable. The sport of run rates, over rates, strike rates and economy rates knows no such thing as effort rate. All anyone can do is watch a game unfold and interpret what they see. Between May and September of 1981, when Australia toured England, several people saw a lot of things they had trouble interpreting.
* * *
AUSTRALIA'S NEW CAPTAIN was interviewed by John Wiseman on Channel Ten's Eyewitness News the day after his appointment. Kim's hair was damp and combed straight — no curls — but as he licked dry lips and swiped Perth's flies out of his face he looked more boyish than ever.
'Kim, first of all congratulations. What do you think of some of this morning's criticism?'
'Well I don't know who's criticising me at all, John, but I suppose one in my position isn't going to please everybody.'
Kim had led Australian Test teams before. That was during the World Series Cricket days when the country's three dozen finest were otherwise engaged as Kerry Packer's so-called circus act. This time the tidings were auspicious, theoretically: a full-strength squad with a winning chance. Theory was one thing. In reality, Western Australia's battle-hardened Bruces — Laird and Yardley — had been left out. Human dynamite sticks Jeff Thomson and Len Pascoe were missing. 'I always thought selectors were idiots,' reasoned Thommo. 'Now I know it.' Record crowds descended on the bar of the Dungog Bowls Club. Not since 1964 had local sweetheart Doug Walters been overlooked for an Ashes trip. 'We would listen on the wireless till 3 a.m. when Doug was playing,' grumbled one irate Dungogian. 'When he hit a four we'd celebrate by opening a cold one. Maybe we're biased but, blimey, it's a bit crook.'
Heading the unlikelier inclusions in Australia's 1981 Ashes squad was Graeme Beard. He'd added folded-finger off-breaks to his repertoire two years earlier when his slow-mediums kept thudding into Tooheys advertising boards at a speed considerably zippier than slow-medium. Youngest of the Chappell trinity, Trevor, was also England-bound. 'The first Australian cricketer to have won a major berth on the strength of his brilliant fielding,' commented McFarline in the Age.
Alas, Trevor was a like-for-not-at-all-like swap with Greg. Greg ruled himself out to fellow selectors on a Tuesday. The squad — minus a captain — was announced on the Wednesday. A public explanation was forthcoming, for a fee, on a Thursday-night TV special, Greg Chappell: Covers Off. He revealed that his son Stephen no longer knew whether Greg Chappell was his absent father, a famous cricketer, or both. Business interests, including an insurance company, were mounting too. 'March, April, May and in particular June,' he elaborated, 'are vital to the success of the venture.'
On the Friday, Kim was named captain. A newspaperman gave him the good news before anyone from the board did.
Where was Lillee hiding? That was an eventful week's biggest mystery. Six months earlier he and Marsh had each rejected the Western Australian vice-captaincy under Kim. Lillee's name was one of sixteen on the teamsheet for England. But how much was that piece of paper worth? Scuttlebutt crisscrossed the continent from east to west and back again. Finally Perth journalist Ken Casellas found Lillee in the riverside clubrooms of Tompkins Park. It was Saturday night. Lillee was puffed from twenty-five knackering overs for Melville. He was drinking his own version of a shandy — one gulp out of a can of beer, one gulp of lemonade — but there was nothing bubbly about his demeanour. 'I've got an unlisted phone number and it's been changed a few times. Still I get calls day and night from all over the world from people wanting to know whether I'm going on tour. All I want to say is I'm happy the season is over.' The mystery deepened.
Kim celebrated his appointment by popping a couple of balls out of the park in his next innings, an unbeaten 156 in a first-grade semi-final. At the ABC Sportsman of the Year awards, he was asked if he tended to decide on a stroke before the ball was bowled. Confounding the laws of reliable run gathering, Kim answered: 'Yes.' Knowledgeable sorts watching in their living rooms were appalled. But vindication arrived a week before the team's departure when he was listed among Wisden's five cricketers of the year. Inclusion in Wisden's famous five traditionally recognises a season's haystack of runs or wickets. Kim was picked for his two celestial Centenary Test knocks. Anyone who reckoned it impossible to premeditate deliveries and prosper needed only to skim the highlights tape.
The thought of returning to England was sweet. It was tantalising enough for Lillee to decide to go too, although he and Marsh were permitted to skip the pre-tour detour to Sri Lanka. The Australians arrived on day one of the monsoon season. Pitches were custom-built for Sri Lanka's finger-spinning trio. Power was switched off every morning and evening, for the system was hydro-electric and there was a water shortage. On the field, too, it was as if Australia were playing in darkness. Outclassed in the drawn four-dayer, they sneaked the skimpiest of victories in the unofficial limited-overs series, perverse preparation for an English spring.
Really, the twelve-day stopover was a fact-finding mission on behalf of board delegates unsure which way to vote on Sri Lanka's bid for Test status. Australian officials were reportedly seen photographing stadium toilets as evidence for the 'no' case. 'Come on, Aussies, come off it,' pleaded a local newspaper. But all four games were sellouts. Sri Lankan Testhood followed months later. And Kim had not a bad word for the place, the toilets, the tour, or the administrators who devised it. He was equal to the diplomatic challenge posed by one of Rodney Hogg's eccentric contributions to Australian touring folklore. Riled by humidity and his inability to prick a ballooning middle-order partnership, Hogg marked a cross between his eyes and nearly decapitated Ranjan Madugalle with a head-high full toss. The captain strode imperiously across from mid-on: 'That's not on, Rodney.'
England was three-jumper territory. Kim acclaimed the opening net session at Lord's the best first-day workout of any tour he'd been on. This cocktail of good cheer, naivety and overstatement would become a trademark of his public pronouncements, one that bugged some team-mates. But not yet. At Arundel Castle he was out to his first ball of the tour, an Intikhab Alam top-spinner grubbering into his boot. His humour survived. Invited by the ground manager in Swansea to nominate a time for practice, Kim grinned. 'Six o'clock in the morning — the only time it doesn't rain in this country.' Drizzle, sleet, frost and murk gave Kim ample chance to polish his introductory note for the Test brochure:
As I write this message I know that I am back in England. Once again we are stuck inside the dressing room watching rain stream down the windows. However, I am certain this year's full tour of England will prove to be one of the most exciting in the long history of England versus Australia contests ... I hope you enjoy watching the cricket and also that I will be able to say 'hello' to as many of you as possible.
Kim's 'hello, everyone' policy extended to travelling Australian scribes. 'We want you to feel part of the team,' he told them. He enquired after their welfare over breakfast and hosted candid off-the-record briefings over drinks. 'Team-mates are singing his praises daily and lauding the great team spirit,' reported Alan 'Sheff' Shiell. 'Australian pressmen will not tolerate a bad word about Hughes the man.' English broadsheet writers stepped the pro-Kim hoopla up several more adjectives. Some felt they'd been shown few courtesies during the furry-bellied Chappell dynasty. They appreciated Kim's plain-speaking eloquence, his insistence that nothing was too bothersome. 'I hope he becomes what he deserves to be — the most popular captain since Lindsay Hassett,' wrote Robin Marlar in the Sunday Times. Frank Keating found fault only with the patchy stubble clinging to Kim's chin: 'His clean boy scout's face somehow goes better with the sparkling innocence of his batsmanship. Pulled this way and that by photographers, fringers, high commissioners, low commissioners, book commissioners and hall-porter commissioners, he never stopped being softly obliging.'
Kim's next coup was to oversee Australia's maiden triumph in a one-day series in England. Shivering and rusty, they lost at Lord's then levelled at Edgbaston, where England needed six off the last over and Lillee kept them to three. As Kim walked into the press conference, Australian journalists rose and clapped. At training before the series decider, Trevor Chappell confessed his terror of England's middle order, which had throttled him on wickets made for his glamourless wobblers. Yes, admitted Kim, he felt a bit the same way about Trevor's bowling. But he stuck to the plan. Chappell's three wickets proved suffocating.
Hunches continued hatching fruitfully once the Tests started. Twice Kim called heads and chose to bowl. No Ashes captain had gambled like that before in the first two Tests of a series. Australia won at Trent Bridge and had marginally the better of a soggy Lord's draw. At Trent Bridge, Kim kept the cordon stacked with four slips and the ball in the hand of a 25-year-old debutant with a centipede moustache. Terry Alderman's hula-hooping outswingers knocked nine Englishmen aside. Chasing 132, Australia's seventh-wicket pair were meandering towards victory when Kim joined Alan McGilvray and Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Test Match Special box.
McGilvray: Weather good, perfect conditions. Now Lawson ...
Hughes: Whewwwwsh.
McGilvray: There's a big sigh from Kim Hughes. Yes I know how you feel. Now Dilley is on his way to Lawson, and Lawson turns it ...
Hughes: ONE MORE.
McGilvray: One more, says Kim.
Not for a second did he disguise nerves or excitement.
McGilvray: Dilley moves away from us to bowl to Lawson. A full toss and ...
Hughes: GOOD SHOT! FOUR! GOODY!
Kim clapped his hands and shouted advice and bellowed over the top of the two commentators.
McGilvray: Chappell, you must stay there and pick up these four runs. And Kim, if you'd like to leave anytime ...
Hughes: Yeah, I might, ah, just wait one more ball.
A strangled titter.
McGilvray: Right, one more ball, all right.
Hughes: I might just sit in my seat.
CMJ: Terrible isn't it, Kim?
Hughes: Ay?
CMJ: Terrible isn't it?
Hughes: Aww, I don't know how anybody can captain for more than a game.
That night it was possible to picture Kim Hughes, twenty-seven, captaining his country for so long as he craved. The Ashes urn had been England's property since 1977. But the handover was nigh, surely. Several uproarious hours later at the team hotel, Marsh, Lillee and Kim were seen deep in discussion, shoulders entwined. Kim cheerfully told anyone who'd listen about how Marsh had held up a glove and halted play with Lillee poised to tear in at Willis.
'You've got all the angles buggered up,' Marsh roared.
'Oh,' said Kim. 'What do you want?' Marsh reset the field. Deep cover point was relocated twenty-five metres sideways. Two balls later Willis hit straight to him.
'I'm hardly a captain at all,' Kim was saying that night. 'But Hughes, Marsh and Lillee is a bloody good captain.'
* * *
COMING UP TO the Third Test at Headingley, Australia's coach Peter Philpott sensed Kim was in trouble. Over a beer, he voiced his worries to Marsh, the vice-captain.
'Rodney, we've got to try to help him.'
'He's got the job,' said Marsh. 'He's a big boy. Let him stew in it.'
Marsh's words still grate in Philpott's head:
It wasn't a pleasant relationship between Kim and the other two. They thought he was a soft boy. They were two hard men and they didn't have much respect for him. They respected his batting but not his captaincy or him as a human being. I don't think they respected Kim as a man. They didn't hide that. In fact they allowed themselves at times to do just the opposite. You couldn't help but watch and be disappointed at the way they threw the boy to the wolves — threw him to the wolves and didn't throw out a line to help him.
Philpott found Kim faintly immature. 'I think Rodney and Dennis saw him as a kind of little golden boy.' Captaincy was the main volcano of contention. Dennis thought Rodney should be in charge. Rodney thought Rodney should be in charge. It reminded Philpott — up to a point — of Australia's 1957–58 visit to South Africa. A freckle-faced pharmacist still living with his parents led that tour. 'Neil Harvey and Richie Benaud would have been flabbergasted when Ian Craig was appointed captain over them,' says Philpott. 'But they gave him total support. Ian was only a kid and they helped greatly. That didn't happen in 1981.'
With Australia one Test up, the cracks were undetectable to outsiders. Esso scholar Carl Rackemann was borrowed from Surrey's 2nd XI to fortify Australia's sniffling pace attack against Warwickshire. Thirty-six more thrilling hours he'd never known: 'My impression of the dressing room was that everything was pretty positive, pretty good.' Similarly, the reporters who rained a standing ovation upon Kim after the second one-dayer had no inkling of the bloodletting behind slammed doors. In the first match Australia bowled sloppily, fielded scruffily, and Philpott told them so. Second time round they were a team rejuvenated. Henry Blofeld's report in the Australian concluded: 'For me, Peter Philpott and Geoff Lawson were the men of the match.'
Blofeld's article whipped round the dressing room. Fair enough, thought the players from New South Wales, Philpott's home state. Bulldust, chorused the rest. 'The Western Australians, they were livid,' Philpott remembers. 'Kimberley was very upset. And the lines were clearly defined.' To suggest any correlation between Philpott's salvo and the team's salvation was tripe, the players huffed. And if there was ... Well, if that was the case then the little man in the tracksuit was plainly exceeding his brief.
When Marsh and Lillee addressed Kim by his nickname, something about the way croaky voices draped over the first syllable — 'Claaaaa-gee' — made others think of grown men patting a boy on the head. Body language — folded arms, rolling eyes — often spoke loudest. Pinpointing what ailed this team wasn't always easy. It was a feeling people got. Lawson believes Lillee and Marsh spent 'nearly every waking hour' undermining Kim. 'I wouldn't have thought that,' counters Wood. 'We were playing very well.' For Graeme Beard: 'We were a bunch of fellas playing cricket for Australia and it was fabulous. I got on well with all the blokes.'
Was it a united side? Beard goes quiet.
'Well. Probably not. A difficult situation.'
And that's all you'll say?
'Mmmm,' says Beard. 'Well. Yeah.'
The cracks were small in those early days on tour but they were there. And they were not like cracks in a vase that could be sealed with putty. These cracks were like a run in a stocking. They were only going to get bigger. They opened up the moment the team left for Sri Lanka minus Marsh and Lillee. 'That was very significant,' says Philpott. 'In the bonding period, they weren't there.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Golden Boy by Christian Ryan. Copyright © 2009 Christian Ryan. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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