The Joy of Six: great fast-bowling spells

Dennis Lillee v Viv Richards, 1976 Gillette Cup semi-final

There aren’t many single games, nor individual bowling spells that are worthy of an entire book, but the 1976 Gillette Cup semi-final and Dennis Lillee’s magnificent display of fast bowling therein are an exception. So come Christmas time, cricket lovers can escape the near-certain fate of that 99^th Bradman biography hefting its way onto already groaning bookshelves if instead their loved ones plump for Ian Brayshaw’s new effort The Miracle Match, a blow by blow account of that game in the words of the men who took part. That includes the author himself.

This was the game in which Lillee, enraged at watching his team-mates plummet from 50-1 to a paltry total of 77, responded to captain Rod Marsh’s innings break instructions that Queensland should be made to fight for their victory by barking, “Make ‘em fight for it, be buggered. We’re going to beat these bastards.” Western Australia coach Daryl Foster said he’d never seen Lillee so angry.

In Brayshaw’s book, Jeff Thomson ponders that sometimes on the days he bowled fastest, he never quite realised it was happening, but Lillee knew what he was going to do. Not that it was nuanced and not that he held out much hope of a win. Lillee was actually “so pissed off” that he abandoned his normal lunch routine of peaches, ice-cream and Sustagen for a banquet of fish and chips, figuring that it wouldn’t matter either way. Noting the likelihood of an early finish, other WA players mooted an afternoon barbecue once the runs had been knocked off.

At the recollection of Kim Hughes, Marsh left his men with a colourful final thought before play resumed: “When I was a young bloke I lost 11 tin soldiers…well I fucken found ‘em today! I’m expecting you blokes to get in there and do something.” Some in the local crowd, expecting considerably less, had already left.

Lillee’s response was swift. With Marsh standing 30 metres back behind the batsman, four bouncers in succession forced the maroon-capped, strutting Viv Richards into evasive measures before the sixth ball of the first (8-ball) over blasted through the gate and rocked back his off stump. Lillee not only went on to bowl his side to an absurd 15-run victory, but in that over produced the most exciting barrage imaginable.

Curtly Ambrose - 7 for 1 v Australia at Perth, 1993

A man of few words and a cricketer committed to avoiding the demystification that might arise from fraternisation with his opponents, Curtly Ambrose did better at communicating his feelings through the medium of terrifying bouncers.

Rare was the occasion that he needed much assistance from pitches but when he got it, as was the case to a horrifying degree during the Perth Test of 1993, he was unstoppable. Until the calamity of Adelaide a week prior, Australia were 1-0 up and looking good to end two decades of misery against the West Indies. Richards, Greenidge and Marshall were gone but then, as was expected, Ambrose had hit his straps; his 10 wickets in that one-run Windies triumph had made Perth a winner-takes-all scenario.

If the Australians were looted in the city of churches, Ambrose burned Perth to the ground. In one captivating spell the tall, lithe Antiguan reduced the home side from a cautious 2-85 to 119 all out, extracting terrifying bounce off a good length. If it hadn’t been for the run out of Shane Warne, Ambrose’s 7-1 might have been 8-1. Some of the world’s finest batsmen floundered; the loss of David Boon was followed a ball later to an almost unplayable, lifting off-cutter that set the wheels in motion for the first pair of ducks in Allan Border’s career.

All it took was 32 balls from Ambrose and the innings was over. For Australia, fending off 90mph deliveries that rose off the deck like howitzers (if howitzers first came down from a release point of almost 10 feet) on a lively Waca deck proved impossible. And was there any greater harbinger of Australian doom than the rapidly-pumping white wristbands of Curtly?

It’s remarkable to note that through this carnage, Australia actually squeezed out 33 runs from Ambrose’s bowling partners. If you want to see the single he conceded, YouTube is currently offering every ball of the spell. By the end of that day, of course, the West Indians were 1-135 and the Frank Worrell Trophy as good as conceded. The Waca groundsman, who’d prepared a pitch that could only ever have amplified the strengths of the tourists, was also dismissed.

Dennis Lillee 8-29 v Rest of the World - Perth, 1972

Yes, it’s a double-up up on DK Lillee, but with damned good reason. Single innings figures of 8-29 are pretty handy against any side let alone a batting line-up as star-laden as the 1971-72 Rest of the World side he ran through in the second ‘Test’ at the Waca.

Aside from the flouncy button-up shirts and bouncing mop of hair, the thing that most strikes you watching young Lillee bound in during this spell is the tangle of arms and legs as he approaches the crease and how just how untamed the delivery stride is by the coaching manual or common sense. If the World Series years were cricket’s punk movement, early 70s Lillee was a freaky, balls-out, Led Zeppelinesque assault.

There would be dire repercussions for the bowler when he did all but totally destroy his spinal column. Eventually he was forced to remodel the unbridled flair of his action into something more pragmatic and durable, but in those early summers of his fame it was wild and wooly.

At Melbourne, Sobers, Gavaskar, Lloyd and Greig all fell to Lillee, along with four equally credentialed team-mates. Australia’s first-innings 349 looked mountainous once the bowler had sniped the combined side out from 3-37 to 59 all out. A game later Sobers (who spoke of Lillee’s feats on that tour here) would fall to Lillee for another duck before make a brilliant 254 in the second innings at the MCG, a knock that those in attendance still recall in breathless tones.

Just how quick was Lillee’s famous spell at Perth? “I don’t think an Australian side has been back as far as what the slips cordon was back that day,” recalled Australia’s Keith Stackpole in 2005. “I reckon it was 30 metres and they were still going up. You didn’t catch them at knee height. It was more like chest height.”

“I think it was the only time I saw Garry Sobers relieved. I reckon he was relieved to get out. When he walked past us, ‘Sobey’ looked to the heavens as if to say: ‘Jeez, that was quick’!”

Sarfraz Nawaz 7 for 1 v Australia, 1979

The inclusion of Sarfraz might seem anomalous, because the Pakistani couldn’t match anyone in this list for pace or intimidation factor, but if Curtly gets in for a spell of 7 for 1 then a performance of the exact same specifications (well, it took one ball longer) needs a hearing too.

What Sarfraz’s effort also highlights is that sometimes great spells come from nowhere – Australia were set fair at 3-305 (Border 105, Hughes 84) during the MCG Test and needed only 77 to win when he triggered a staggering collapse – and also go against the grain of the bowler’s earlier efforts. This one also gave a preview of the eye-popping feats of reverse swing that his countrymen would conjure in the decades that followed.

Bowling off a shortened run-up at a speed no greater than military medium, the cult hero sliced through Border, Graeme Wood, Hughes and then the rest of the Australian line-up, only being denied a perfect 10 by the run-out of Aussie skipper Graham Yallop. The clip below is a nice excursion into the late-70s swing bowling aesthetic. But perhaps a more fitting tribute to Sarfraz is the giant, oversized scoreboard panel bearing those magical figures that now adorns the wall of the Percy Beames bar in the MCC Members reserve. It’s an appropriately imposing monument to a once-in-a-lifetime spell of bowling.

Duncan Spencer v Viv Richards, 1993

The name Duncan Spencer may barely register a blip on the radar of English and Australian cricket fans, both of whom could have blinked and missed the career of the injury-plagued bowler. Spencer shone brightly but all too briefly in spells at Kent and Western Australia in the early 1990s. If his name does ring a bell, maybe it’s for the fact that he was the first Australian professional cricketer to be banned for taking a performance enhancing drug (nandrolone), purportedly to dull the chronic back pain that plagued his attempts to stay on the park.

All his body allowed was 16 first-class appearances and 20 List A games, one of which produced a stunning companion piece to Viv v Lillee and rather neatly bookended the career of the West Indies great. Richards, winding up his professional career at Glamorgan, reckoned it was the fastest spell of bowling he ever faced.

At 41, the Master Blaster might have been past his peak, but not many bowlers could have said they made him look like he needed a helmet. Spencer did in thrilling style and then all but disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Mitchell Johnson’s 5-12 after lunch in Adelaide, 2013

We’ve actually been spoiled for magnificent spells of fast bowling in the past 12 months. As Dale Steyn pulled back the pace a little, that didn’t always feel like a sure thing. Not all of them produced eye-catching figures either. One of my favourites, Morne Morkel’s wince-inducing battering of Michael Clarke at Cape Town, didn’t even result in a wicket for the bowler. Clarke somehow soldiered on to his gutsiest hundred, a match-winning one as it turned out.

Mitchell Johnson has bowled a few memorable spells in this time, to say the least; 12 wickets of lethal pace at Centurion, where he broke Ryan McLaren’s arm and the back of both South African innings; nine at Brisbane to rattle England in Australia’s first home Ashes Test at Brisbane; eight more cheapies at Melbourne when the tourists’ spirits had flagged. But it was at Adelaide where the Ashes were virtually won and lost and Johnson produced his most destructive single spell of the series: 5-12 as day three patrons had barely settled into their seats post-lunch. On a flat deck.

Of his 7-40, four were bowled. No batsman was more evocatively castled than Alastair Cook to kick things off at the close of day two, from a ball that shaped in briefly and then moved away at 150kph to cannon into his off stump at half-height. Cook played half a foot inside the eventual line of the delivery and couldn’t really be blamed for doing so. Watching it, his team-mates must have squirmed. I saw it in a hospital, right as a good friend was showing off her newborn. I’ll let you guess which one kept my attention the longest.

Stuart Broad lost his leg stump, Jimmy Anderson froze on the spot, shaping to play a shot after the fact as his middle went cartwheeling behind. That put Johnson on his second hat-trick of the spell. Then and for the rest of a single magic summer, Australians ignored their friends’ babies, ran into the living room at the mere mention of Johnson’s name, topped up their drinks only when his bowling partners wheeled away and rejoiced that a man for whom consistency had never been a byword could time after time produce such beautiful brutality.