Boxing Day howler still hurts for legends
New Zealand return to the MCG on Thursday, 32 years since their last Boxing Day test which still holds bitter memories for some but also forged a lasting friendship. Mark Geenty talks to the main players about the controversies of that 1987 epic.
Sir Richard Hadlee recalls the feeling of sheer exhaustion, sprawled on the outfield at the Melbourne Cricket Ground 32 years ago. Closely followed by outrage, and utter deflation that New Zealand somehow hadn’t won. The cricketing great was bracing himself for one final over amid a marathon final spell in the 1987 Boxing Day test and his 21-year-old new ball partner, Danny Morrison, bowled a pinpoint full reverse swinging delivery to Australian No 10 Craig McDermott.
With eight balls left in the test, this was it. Australia 230-9, chasing 247 to win. Umpire Dick French was unmoved as the New Zealanders screamed for lbw. ‘‘Not out,’’ he said as Morrison slumped on his back, mid-pitch, gazing at the piercing blue sky with the crowd roaring.
‘‘DRS [decision review system] would have sorted that out today. It was absolutely plumb.
That was game, set and match,’’ Hadlee tells Stuff.
‘‘Anyway, we can’t change it. But it denied us a victory.’’
And a trophy, too. Australian No 11 Mike Whitney’s profile skyrocketed after he survived Hadlee’s final over (more on that later) and captain Allan Border hoisted the Trans-Tasman Trophy for the 1-0 series victory. A New Zealand victory would have retained the silverware they’d won at home in 1986.
‘‘That result was hugely significant. We had a lot to lose, and we did,’’ Hadlee says.
It was Morrison’s debut series and he was living the dream, sharing the new ball with his idol. On the 30th anniversary of the test, Morrison recalled: ‘‘Chopper [captain Jeff Crowe] said: ‘Danny, here’s an opportunity, win us this test. I thought ‘Jesus, what?’ So it was just a case of tear on in and try and knock over McDermott or Whitney.’’
With cricket fans from two nations holding their breath, Morrison thought he’d done it off the penultimate delivery of his 16th over, the 91st of the innings.
‘‘I was just trying to get it straight and because the ball was older it just hugged in. LBW or bowled was the big mode of dismissal to knock over 10 and 11. We all went up with the big appeal. It felt like a long time, then I rolled onto my back and thought ‘s..t he’s not going to give this’.’’
Co-commentator Rod Marsh drily said the New Zealanders could count themselves ‘‘reasonably unfortunate’’.
French may have ruled it was swinging past leg stump, after Ian Chappell initially thought it had bowled McDermott. Morrison followed up with a venomous short one but McDermott kept it out, and his final over was done.
Morrison encountered French again before a domestic one-day match at the start of his commentary career in Australia. ‘‘I couldn’t help myself when I introduced him: ‘Here is match referee Dick French and yes, I’m still having therapy about that lbw’.’’
Whitney had the second-best view in the house and said with a chuckle in 2017:
‘‘He’s from New South Wales and I knew him pretty well. I’ve seen Dick at the Sydney test match and I’ve asked him: that lbw decision in ’87? He said ‘Whits, in my opinion it was not out’. I go ‘that’s my man, thank you very much’.
‘‘It was frighteningly close. Given today’s technology I think Craig may have been fairly adjacent. But none of that existed. I love Danny, he’s a wonderful guy and was a fantastic bowler. When I see him from time to time he says ‘that bloody lbw!’ It was very, very close.’’
Hadlee holds no ill feeling towards Greg Dyer, even if a fair few New Zealanders still do. Australia’s wicketkeeper was the central figure in the other major controversy of that test, on day one when he claimed the catch that wasn’t off Andrew Jones on 40 with New Zealand well set at 119-1.
‘‘I’m not saying it’s deliberate cheating because sometimes you don’t know when you dive forward and you think ‘the ball is in my gloves’ and you allow the umpires to make the decision. Replays showed it bounced and the decision had already been made,’’ Hadlee says.
‘‘I don’t have animosity for anything like that because things happen so quickly and decisions have to be made in the spur of the moment. The DRS wasn’t available in our day so there has to be acceptance and tolerance.’’
Dyer, too, remains adamant he didn’t cheat. In 2017 he was polite in a text exchange but unwilling to add to what he’s previously said on ‘that catch’.
In 2015 he told Peter Hanlon of The Age: ‘‘If somebody has hit it and it hasn’t carried or I knew I hadn’t caught it, I never appealed for a catch in my life and never would. That sort of integrity is very important to me.’’
It looked brilliant glovework at first glance. Commentator Tony Greig bellowed: ‘‘What a great catch that was by Dyer,’’ as umpire Tony Crafter raised the finger. Dyer looked uncertain, sitting on the turf.
In his interview with The Age, Dyer recalled tumbling across, the ball hitting his left glove and finishing up in his right. ‘‘I thought, ‘I don’t know how that happened’.’’ Neither umpire consulted Dyer and Jones was sent on his way.
Replays from ground level were damning, showing the ball clearly rolling on the grass.
Greig continued: ‘‘In my opinion there is absolutely no doubt that that ball has hit the ground and wicketkeeper Dyer has claimed a catch which doesn’t look to me as if it was one.’’
In the New Zealand players’ viewing area there was near pandemonium, as Morrison recalls.
‘‘I remember Smithy jumping up and saying ‘hang on a minute’, and a few other expletives. They showed it again and we were jumping up out of our seats saying ‘you’re kidding me, not again’. Those older guys had played in the underarm game. To have more of this, they couldn’t believe it.’’
Dyer said, after seeing the replays, his requests to address the media and visit the New Zealand dressing room at stumps were rebuffed by Australian team management. Morrison said there was no open hostility towards Dyer although Jones didn’t take it well.
an Adelaide draw. Now, in his 75th over of the match, already with 10 wickets, the great bowler had six more balls to dislodge Whitney, who ended his 118-match first-class career with a batting average of 5.6.
‘‘Hadlee was in this incredible trance, so focused. I remember being at extra cover throwing the ball back to him and he was in this wonderful zone. It was so memorable,’’ Morrison says. Whitney was just thinking survival.
‘‘When I went out there Craig McDermott punched me in the chest and said ‘let’s get the 30 [runs]’ and I said ‘you’ve got to be kidding’. We just had to hang in there. Allan Border tapped me on the shoulder as I went out and he had a half smile on his face and I knew he hadn’t won a series as captain. That’s what he was saying, please hang in there.’’
A packed cordon and close catchers circled as Hadlee breezed in, exhausted and trying to summon one more miracle ball.
Whitney left, played and missed and got bat on the straight ones, eventually raising his arm in triumph and galloping towards McDermott.
‘‘There was a fair crowd but I reckon I’ve met half a million people who said they were there that day,’’ Whitney says.
‘‘I just wanted to go out there and do my best. I knew Jeff and Marty Crowe pretty well and had played against Ian Smith and they were giggling when I came out. We hung in there.
‘‘It was huge. Everybody knew I had a batting average of five. Richard still cannot believe to this day that he couldn’t knock me over. I call it one of the greatest moments of my career and he calls it one of the biggest disappointments, that he couldn’t get me out.’’
Hadlee recalls patting Whitney on the helmet in congratulations, putting his arm around his shoulder and walking off. ‘‘We had the trophy presentation and I remember inside the boundary line just sitting down, sprawled out. I was absolutely knackered.’’
There was minimal interaction between the teams. Border’s breakthrough series win as captain meant the Australians were jubilant, and they flew to Perth that night where they continued the all-nighter, and Whitney and McDermott were hailed as heroes. ‘‘It [celebration] was long and hard.’’
The New Zealanders wondered how they hadn’t won it.
‘‘I remember sitting there and we were all very flat. Having that lbw turned down and a few other what-ifs. Everybody was pretty quiet and pretty down, feeling let down again at the MCG on that wonderful stage,’’ Morrison says.
His Melbourne-based father, and now-wife Kim, joined him afterwards and it was a low-key night.
The team had to depart for Perth for the one-day series the next morning which saw a first: Hadlee missing the bus.
‘‘He was in charge of time because he was such a stickler, the great one. He was so shattered he slept through his alarm. We were all on the bus to the airport for Perth and Hadlee missed the call. He slept in so we had to ring his room,’’ Morrison said.
‘‘I remember as the bus was leaving the Hilton the bloke put on the tape of Billy Birmingham’s Twelfth Man. ‘Typical stinking f...ing hot day here in Bombay’. It had just come out. It relieved the low feeling a bit.’’
Whitney had barely left the field when he became the new owner of a prized piece of cricketing memorabilia. ‘‘I remember walking off and to Richard’s credit, the moment the game was over he put his arm around me and said ‘Whit, you’ve done a great thing for Australian cricket’. Ian Smith walked over with that ball and said ‘you’ve earned this today, you did a great thing for your country’. How beautiful is that?’’
The ball nestled in one of Whitney’s kit bags for years, until Hadlee saw him at a function and asked where it was.
A few years later he asked again.
Whitney mulled it over, and waited until a dinner on the eve of the 2015 World Cup final at the MCG to complete what Hadlee described as ‘‘a lovely gesture’’.
‘‘I just appeared, and pulled the ball out of my pocket and handed it to Richard. I said ‘it’s my ball, Ian Smith gave it to me, but I’m giving it to you on permanent loan forever.
‘‘He wrapped his fingers around it like he was about to run in and bowl, that down-the-pipe, on the dinner plate outswinger, and he just looked at me and I’m pretty sure he had a tear in the eye. I got emotional because he took 36 five-fors and this completed the set. I had that ball for 27 years.’’
Hadlee will be there on Thursday, and in
Sydney for the third test, and expects he’ll catch up with his mate Whitney again among other former Australian players.
‘‘It’s so easy to reminisce and have a few laughs and a beer. Those friendships have gone on and on and there’s nothing to prove any more, just embrace the opportunity to be here.’’