In his days, Sir Richard Hadlee (in pic) was the ultimate fear factor in the middle, someone most batsmen would want to sidestep even in a marketplace. He destroyed so many bats, annexed so many existences on the 22 yards across the world that seeing him being hit for a six 18 years later, at a smaller than Hobbit ground, could just be explained as indulgence of a veteran out to have some fun and frolic with cricket.
Eighteen years is a long time to mellow down and Hadlee is smiling now, something he rarely did in those good old days when he was taking down oppositions by the strength of his shoulder — 400 wickets in just 79 matches is no mean achievement. Those were the days he would glare down the batsman if he deigned to swing his bat to his ball.
Today, fast bowlers have lost that respect, that terror element. They are being slammed to 400-plus scores, the pitches are flatter, the rules stacked against them. Ask Hadlee why so many 200 plus scores are being made in the last 15 overs and he tells you there are too many angles to this.
“We’re not seeing many yorkers bowled. What they do is have a lot of change-ups. In my time, I had two slower balls. Today, fast bowlers have four varieties of slower balls. Sometimes they’re bowling width and full, so the batsmen can score only in one direction.
So their attacking plan is very different from when I played. But I still believe that if you get the good old fashioned toe crusher in, on middle and leg, even if the batsman is backing away, he can only hit straight,” he explains.
On the field at the Hobbiton movie set, where he played backyard cricket with a gaggle of mediapersons, all barefoot and red shirted, the legendary quick bowled gently, taking just four paces, applauding the batsman who hit him for a six and mixing up all the fun with a bit of talk about a whole lot of issues, the new aggression shown by New Zealand skipper Brendon McCullum being one of them.
“In my career of 18 years through the 1970s and the 1980s, I didn’t play under a captain as aggressive as Brendon. When you’re aggressive and proactive, it can be high risk, it can backfire. At this stage it hasn’t. But, what he is saying to his bowlers, and if I had a captain like that what he would be saying to me is, ‘I back you’. I’ll give you the field that you need to get wickets and do the job. That would’ve been nice in my time, although it didn’t happen. I had some good captains, but Brendon is something a little bit special at the moment,” he said.
But he is happy with New Zealand’s new found confidence of winning. “The fact that we have bowled five teams out suggests that our bowling attack is working particularly well…. But once you reach the knockouts, it’s a different ballgame altogether for all eight teams. One of the challenges our batsman will have is that we may have to chase a score of 300 to 350. We haven’t been stretched to that stage so far and that is something we have to be wary of,” Sir Richard said.
India, he is most impressed with. “I’m more impressed with the Indian pace attack now than a couple of months ago. In Australia, I thought the attack really struggled, with lines and lengths, too inconsistent. They’ve sorted that out. Shami, in particular, has been impressive. The bowling has been the weaker suit, but they’ve sorted that out.
That is going to make them very competitive in this tournament,” he opined, biting into the chicken satay that he walked in with, posing for pictures and then sauntering off to Middle Earth to stand tall like Gandalf amid the Hobbits who would want just one more ball from him to mark their own moment of glory — of having played Sir Richard Hadlee.