Richard Hadlee, one of the greatest seam bowlers in history, celebrates his birthday this month. After he retired, soon after being knighted, in 1990, Wisden carried this tribute.
The international bowling career of Richard John Hadlee, KBE, by his own assessment may be divided into three distinct periods: the first five years when he was “erratic, inconsistent and without a great idea of how to get through three days, let alone four, or five”; the years 1977 to 1980 when, according to Glenn Turner, he “came of age”; and the final decade, when he positively raced to his record number of 431 Test wickets by summoning every resource of experience and guile.
It began on February 2, 1973, at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, where he took two wickets in the match against Pakistan for 112 runs, and it ended on July 10, 1990, at Edgbaston, Birmingham, when he was handed the ball with which he had taken five wickets in an innings for the 36th time. From that modest start he had averaged five wickets a match over the 86 Tests in which he had played in the subsequent 17-and-a-half years, and he retired “very happy, relieved, proud”.
That he was the most intelligent fast bowler the world has seen there can be little doubt or argument. He did not have the bumptious lovableness of Botham, the small boy’s hero; he rarely, if ever, showed the fire and fury of Trueman in his pomp; he never besmirched his reputation with the gimmickry or histrionics of Lillee (the bowler he most admired).
Fortunately for the dignity of the game and of a distinguished career, the end of the second innings was a more serious matter, for that final five-wicket performance put New Zealand in with a chance of victory. It would have been unthinkable to look back on a bowling performance by Sir Richard Hadlee as any sort of laughing matter. The last spell of all put matters into perspective. Hadlee bade farewell to the game on a more characteristically thoughtful – and successful – note.
