Cricket when Dennis was bowling was cricket that had to be watched. We spoke about debuting for Australia, a teacher who taught him about hard work, finding belief, the Ashes rivalry, the wicket he valued most, Kerry Packer, Geoffrey Boycott, avoiding the spotlight, a perfect day and being elevated to Legend Status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

Hamish McLachlan: I’ve caught you at your farm block – I hear you love escaping to it.

Dennis Lilee: I love it Hamish. My grandparents were from Jarrahdale, which was one of the first timber towns in WA. It’s up in the hills, it was country then and still country now, it’s just a bit more civilised. I’ve always loved the country, and I did think at one stage about farming, or putting in some vines years ago, but I was still playing, so it was going to be too difficult, but I’ve always had a deep love for the country.

HM: Did you want to be a farmer at school? What did you have your heart set on?

DL: Farming wasn’t something I thought of doing out of school. My parents, and I think all parents were the same in those days – they just told their kids to go and get yourself a job. Teaching, banking, a clerk somewhere in the government, anything, just get a job. That was the thinking coming out of the recession. I loved metalwork and woodwork, but I didn’t see that as a direction. I loved doing it at school.

HM: Then you happened to be fast with a leather ball in your hand, and life took you down a path you didn’t contemplate. Did you enjoy it?

DL: Yep, I absolutely loved it. Now, I would have been viewing cricket was going to be my vocation and my future, but in those days, you actually paid a yearly subscription to play your cricket!

HM: And if you took the new ball for Australia, you got $200 a test match.

DL: Exactly. $200 … and $32 to play for WA. Times have changed a little haven’t they!

HM: We will speak about how the game changed so much later. When did you know as a junior that you were well ahead of the pack? Pat Rafter ended up a two-time US Open Champion, twice got to the final of Wimbledon and world number one, but was a slow developer. Were you a child prodigy?

DL: I don’t think I ever thought I was, certainly not at a very young age. But I must have been good enough as I was playing grade cricket at 16, but I didn’t set the world on fire. I bowled quickly amongst the men, which got a few heads turning. As a junior, I didn’t bowl sides out with eight wickets, and I didn’t take big bags of wickets. I was handy at football, and handy at athletics, without being terrific. I was a handy swimmer. I was useless at tennis!

HM: What sort of a footballer were you?

DL: Scared! I’d play mostly as a ruck rover, and as I went up through the age groups, I’d play a bit at full forward. I was handy, but that’s the best you could say. Dad was a very good footballer. In my view, what takes you to the next step is not natural talent, but an ability to just work harder than anyone else.

HM: Was that what you did?

DL: I think I did, yeah. My theory was simply to do a bit more than anyone else, and if you’re good enough, you’ve gave yourself a good chance of getting there. It didn’t guarantee it, but that was my theory on it all. I loved going to practice, batting, bowling, fielding – every part of it. In the early days playing club cricket as a sixteen-year-old, all the other blokes went up to the bar after a session, and I’d go onto the football field and run lap, after lap, after lap. They’d sit out on the balcony, and there’d be a bit of a snicker, a laugh, but they also respected it. That was the culture then … they thought I was bonkers! But that was my single mindedness. I’m sure that’s what got me there.

HM: Everyone is shaped by people. How big an influence was a primary school teacher of yours – Ken Waters?

DL: Huge. He was a driving force in my sport, and overall thinking I guess. He was a bit old school, and hard, but his philosophies were spot on. When he was giving a rev up for the football, he got right into it!

HM: It was more about the discipline required in sport, and life, and the application?

DL: He was big on that. I respected him, and I listened to every word he said, and I took it all on board. He was a driving force, without being a pushing force. If he told you to do something, you did it. He was a terrific bloke, a tough, hardworking country boy who taught me a lot about values and work ethic.

HM: Did you always think you’d play for Australia?

DL: It was a dream, but in my mind, never really a reality. That stuff was for legends, not me!

HM: How did you find out you were going to debut for Australia?

DL: I was playing grade cricket at the Perth Cricket Club, a place called Fletcher Park, it’s a suburban ground. There’s plenty of space around the ground where people used to park their cars. You’d get thirty or forty cars there sometimes! We all knew the team was going to be announced, and there were a couple of injuries, and there was talk of a few like me being a chance to play. Mum and Dad were at the ground, in the car, and I asked them to toot the horn if I got in. Dad was listening to the radio, watching the cricket, and he tooted. Suddenly, within about 10 seconds, every car at the ground started tooting their horns. It was an amazing moment.

HM: The dream became reality and you debuted against England, in an Ashes test in your early twenties. How was it when you walked into an Australian squad with those big personalities who were your heroes?

DL: It was an incredible time. It was the second last Test of the series. They’d tried every other fast bowler in Australia, so it seemed as though it was my turn after five others were given a go. I was the last chance saloon! I was in a stupor for some time, particularly going down to the ground and meeting all of the blokes I looked up to and idolised. There was Bill Lawry, Chappell, Stackpole, Walters, Mallett … they were all icons of the game I loved. Legends! I didn’t feel part of it, but they tried to make me feel part of it. I was very naive. They could have told me anything and I’d have believed it. In fact they did, and I did! I didn’t drink … at all.

HM: Did you end up enjoying a beer?

DL: Not a beer. After a long day, bowling thirty odd overs, I would pour a shandy, and I enjoyed that. I used to throw down a few bottles of that right at the end of days play. There’s a photo of me necking a long neck, but what people didn’t know was that it had a third of lemonade in it! All sport in those days had a beer culture, I just didn’t like beer, so I didn’t drink. I wasn’t part of the scene if you like, they didn’t treat me badly as a result, but I wasn’t a part of the culture at that stage.

HM: You took the wicket of Sir Geoffrey Boycott, you took 5 for 84 off 28 overs. On debut.

DL: A lot of overs …

HM: Were they 8 ball overs?

DL: 8 ball overs … yep.

HM: Unbelievable!

DL: And I’m the new kid!

HM: You must have come off thinking, I might have a career here.

DL: After that I gained a bit of confidence, but I still wasn’t sure I was going to make it.

HM: You played against the World XI in Perth in ’71-’72. Took 8 for 29, including the wickets of Sobers, Lloyd, Rohan Kanhai and Sunil Gavaskar. At that point, you must think, yep, I’m OK.

DL: That was absolutely the confidence booster. That’s when I thought I was good enough for the game. I bowled bloody quick, and to knock over those guys, I thought at the very least I deserved my place in the Australian team and I felt comfortable that I wasn’t going to let anyone down.

HM: In terms of your career, there was a hiatus with the back injury in ’73. Was that from pounding down on hard wickets, bowling, bowling, and more bowling?

DL: It’s funny, no one was really sure. There are a lot of theories behind it. At a young age, they reckon you are susceptible with back fractures, up until the age of 22, 23. It’s a combination of that, plus a technically bad action. My action was all over the shop. When I came back from the time off, I’d slowed everything down and got my action more to a much more controlled state so I was less likely to get injured. I bowled the odd quick one, but I didn’t bowl every ball as quick as I could like I had been doing. In those days, I was bowling 160km/h! That’s express, so bowling with a glitch in your action is a recipe for disaster. I think that’s what happened.

HM: It’s like a dam wall that has a leak that doesn’t get fixed. You know how it ends.

DL: Exactly. My back ached a bit, I was quite sore at times, but they hadn’t really discovered stress fractures back then. The small leak was there, but you just kept going. Physios would say your muscles were OK, you didn’t do any X- rays in those days, it was just a bit of physiotherapy, and have another crack! It was all a bit primitive compared to now.

HM: You returned, played an ODI against Pakistan and took 5-34 — the first time a five-wicket haul was ever taken in an ODI.

DL: Was it really? I didn’t know that. OK, wow.

HM: It’s amazing what Kerry Packer did for the reshaping, and re-engineering of an entire sport. Not a club, but a global sport that had been around for so long.

DL: The warning signs were there, and Kerry saw an opportunity. Cricket authorities didn’t take notice of it, in fact they taunted the players in a lot of ways. The secretary of the board actually went to the press and said, “You know what you do if the tail wags the dog? You cut it off”. We were considered the tail! That hurt a bit to be honest. They didn’t think we deserved to be paid much for playing, and we should be thankful we got to play for the country. We were of course, but we couldn’t afford to do it really!

HM: Things have changed!

DL: As they needed to. Calling us the ‘tail’ was an extraordinary statement to make. I remember it stung, and I’m sure it stung most of the players. It was more than that, it was conditions, mode of transport, just a whole lot of different components. The cricket authorities were putting more and more cricket on, but we weren’t being rewarded for what we were doing and the hours we were putting in, so we had a dilemma, and they didn’t address it.

HM: Kerry Packer said you were basically the brainchild of World Series Cricket. Is that right?

DL: That’s absolute fact. I was managed by John Cornell. Or ‘Strop’ as he was known. He managed Paul Hogan and they were on the Paul Hogan show together. Austin Robertson was working for them, so he was doing a lot of the running around. I’d spoken often about the fact that we were all disgruntled, and the blokes had just about had enough of playing for so little.

HM: What was your suggestion?

DL: I said, “I’ve been talking to the players, and I know that I can get the whole of the Australian team to sign up for a new deal. We could play a one-off game at the MCG, with a crowd of 80 to 90 thousand people, and we would do a deal where we could take a fair percentage of the gate, and we’d be happy to play the rest of our careers for near on nothing for Australia. But we just want an opportunity to get ahead”. Strop was in the room at the time, and he said to me, “Have you heard of Kerry Packer?” I said I hadn’t. He said, “Leave it with me. I’ll put it to Kerry”. Kerry loved it and wanted us to sign everyone up. I had to tell all the players to expect a call. A lot of people think it was his idea, and Strop didn’t mind people thinking it was his, but as Kerry said, the embryo came from me putting it to Strop. The product that was produced was totally different in the end.

HM: Kerry made it all happen?

DL: He tried to negotiate along those lines with the establishment, once he’d signed us all up, but they wouldn’t have a bar of him. That’s when he said, “We’ll play some of our own tests, against the World XI, the West Indies, and we will call them Super Tests, and we will play some ODI’s as well”. He changed cricket forever. In the end, everyone around the world signed up because they were disgruntled. They were all playing for bugger all, and it just wasn’t right or fair.

HM: That transformed not just cricket, but payments to the performers of many of the world’s sports.

DL: Absolutely. Payments to the performers changed as a result of Kerry’s boldness. Every cricketer in the world at some stage should get down on their knees and point their bodies towards Kerry Packer’s grave, and say, thank you very much. It wouldn’t have happened without him.

HM: You got offered to spend time commentating, doing TV, and shunned it? You don’t seem to be a guy that enjoys the fame, or the media, at all.

DL: I didn’t, and I still don’t. I had a few opportunities. Cornell said, “When you’re finished, we will set you up to do commentary”. When I couldn’t go to England with stress fractures, Kerry got me over there to do some commentary. They put me on as the anchor man. I was absolutely, shamefully, useless! I lasted half a night. I hope I never see the tapes — they would be dreadful. I did some commentary, and I was OK with that, but I had no real interest in it. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, I knew I’d have to keep travelling, and I knew it would keep me in the spotlight. When I finished, there would have been four years I didn’t go near a cricket ground — or mix with people in cricket at all. I sort of avoided the game, even though I loved the game, and what came with it, for privacy and simplicity I guess.

HM: What did you find difficult about the fame?

DL: I always felt I was never as good as people thought I was, and that didn’t sit easily with me. I felt they thought I was this indestructible bowling machine that was unstoppable. I felt I would disappoint them a bit I guess. I was happy to slink off into the sunset.

HM: When you walk into a room, my best guess is everyone wants to speak to you, talk to you, and have a photograph with you. It must be exhausting.

DL: It can be. What it would also do is take away from your family time. After a function, it was another hour to get away! You had to shake hands with people, take photos, even in the old days before phones. They’d take cameras along! Sign this, sign that, and I did it all. Your wife, your kids, were pushed aside, and the people took over. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just saying, if there is an opportunity to take myself out of that, I tried to do that as much as possible. I liked being with my family and without the fuss. I didn’t need the adulation.

HM: The Ashes are just around the corner. You said of the English cricket team, “You loved to hate them”.

DL: I still think it’s the same. They are the old enemy.

HM: Why is it such an intense rivalry?

DL: I think it stems from the history. Many of the early European settlers were sent out here from England, and there was a school of thought that we were a bit beneath them. We were looked at by them as second best. That was the impression I always had, whether it was real or not of the time we played, but as a result, I would do everything I could to beat them and show them we weren’t second best at all!

HM: It should be a great series. I can’t wait for the first ball. I’ve always been jealous of a fast bowler. You get to take the new ball, on the first day, of a huge match, and set the tone of it all.

DL: Now you’re bringing a smile to my face Hamish — that’s exactly what excited me! It was nerves in the lead up, then once you got to the top of your mark, still riddled with nerves, and once you started to run in, the game was starting, and things settled. You knew you had a lot of work ahead of you, and you loved every minute of it.

HM: I used to watch as a kid and hear the chant that went ….“Liiiiiilleeee!!”. It was electrifying. What was it like when you are the man who they are chanting to?

DL: Even better! It was as good as it gets really. In the heat of battle, representing Australia and at home with the crowd behind you. It was terrific. Having said that, it was slightly embarrassing, because you’re a part of a team, with teammates, and they singled me out for the chants. I never asked them how they felt about it, I hoped they were OK, but I loved it.

HM: When did you hear it for the first time?

DL: I’m not sure, it was so long ago. Perhaps when the people at the River End had just opened the next keg! They had this little stand down there, under a corrugated iron roof, steel uprights, and in the centre was the bar. Five-gallon kegs! The opposition batsman used to always reckon there was no doubt the barman down there plunged the spear just as you were about to deliver the ball to them. They reckon it was done on purpose!

HM: If you could bowl to anyone again, and be at your peak, on any ground, any occasion, who would you be bowling to, and where are you?

DL: The Poms, at the MCG. Boycott would be on strike. Heaven.

HM: Is he the wicket you valued most?

DL: Yes, he was the one. He thought he was so good. He was very arrogant, as a bloke, and as a batsman, but he was so bloody good. I thought he was good against all sorts of bowling, except extreme pace, and that’s what I loved to give him.

HM: Were you, even when you were knackered, able to find a yard or two late in the day against him?

DL: Absolutely. You tried to lift as much as you could if he was still around. He got the adrenaline pumping. It was funny, you thought you were close to done, and then he would come out, and the body would find a way through the pain. It was a great challenge.

HM: You famously summed Geoffrey Boycott up … can you remember exactly how that goes?

DL: “He’s the only bloke I ever met who fell in love with himself at a young age and has remained faithful ever since”. I think it’s pretty accurate!

HM: Did you come up with that?

DL: No! A rugby bloke said it about another player years ago, and I thought it fitted in perfectly with Geoffrey Boycott.

HM: He said famously of you, “He could knock your block off, and he could out-think you too”. How do you out-think a batsman as a bowler?”

DL: You study the way they play, you study whether they are back foot, front foot, you study their grip, which side of the wicket they mainly play, are they more bottom hand, top hand, where do their feet move too? Does he like swing, the short ball? It was a big equation to solve, and you kept trying to find the answer until you did, or they won!

HM: Who’s idea was the famous aluminium bat?

DL: Well, a mate and I started up indoor cricket in Australia in Perth, and one day my business partner came to me with this piece of aluminium railing. What he’d done, was put a batting rubber around it, a tennis grip underneath it, and he said, “Have a hit with this, and see what you think”. To be honest, I hit the ball bloody well! He said, “Should we look at getting a mould for this type of thing?” We ended up getting people to cut it into a shape that resembled a bat, put the rubbers on, and that was it!

HM: You took them to market?

DL: We sold thousands of them! You couldn’t make them quick enough! It was the best thing I ever did, take one out to the middle. The idea was to make a durable option for country cricket, and leagues, rather than test cricket. A bat that wouldn’t crack or snap in half so you could buy one and have it for years with a new grip every now and again. They changed the rules though after a year or so and we couldn’t sell them any more sadly!

HM: “Bowled Lillee, caught Marsh”. One of the most famous lines in cricket. It happened 95 times in tests, which is still a record. Did Rod ever drop one he should have taken?

DL: You know, I can’t honestly remember him dropping one! He had unbelievable hands. He dropped a bottle of beer once, but caught it before it hit the ground! That was about it!

HM: He has said that you may be the worst golfer ever. Is that accurate?

DL: I don’t think it’s a question of ‘may be’, I just am. Terrible.

HM: He tells a good story about you grounding your club in a bunker. He pulled you up on it, and what did you say?

DL: (laughs) “That rule doesn’t apply to me” … it was a bit arrogant, really, but I think I was so bamboozled by the game and going so badly no rules really applied to me. I knew nothing about the etiquette of golf, and I didn’t play much golf. I did play one of my best rounds, out of my backside, with him one day. He said, “With a bit of coaching, you’ll be all right”. The next game, I was back to being bloody hopeless. There was just that one day where it all came together, and it never has again!

HM: Do you watch a lot of cricket now?

DL: I don’t watch much at all. I mainly watch if I have been coaching a fast bowler, or if I think there’s going to be an interesting game. I expect this series to be very, very good. I will try and watch a bit more of it, but I don’t go out of my way. I have an amazing love for the game, I’m just not a huge watcher of it. I’d rather play!

HM: What does a perfect day look like for you now?

DL: Ummm, gee, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. What does it look like? OK, lets try. Have a sleep in, then go into the gym and do a small workout, it always makes me feel good. A 7km walk as fast as my body will allow, and then do some work on the property until the fish start biting down on the river, and then I’ll go and throw a line in. I’ll come back up to the house, and open a special bottle of red wine to finish the day off.

HM: That sounds a pretty good day to me. What sort of fish are you catching?

DL: Sand whiting, King George.

HM: You can catch them on your farm? You don’t have to leave?

DL: No, I’m spoiled. I can get them right out the front at our place. The river runs through our place and off into Swan Lake, and we are right on the lake. We are the first house as you come off Blackwood River down near the sea. Magnificent.

HM: How far from Perth?

DL: When we first got it, nearly five hours, but as fortune had it, with projects on the roads going our way, we can do it in two and three-quarter hours on a good day.

HM: Ideal. What do you miss most about your cricketing days?

DL: My mates in the team. Not the cricket as such, that was hard work, but the friendships from it. It’s like losing family in a way, we were very close-knit teams, both the Australian XI and the WA boys. There were a lot of good blokes there, and I keep in touch with a lot of them. They’re dropping off now though, Hamish. My grandfather, who was a boxing coach back in the day, said to me, “Old age is a curse”. I now realise what he meant. The sad thing is you start off as a baby, and you end up a baby if you live long enough. You need to make the most of your days.

HM: If you knew what you knew now, what would you tell yourself, as a 15 year-old?

DL: Go for it son. Give whatever you do, everything you’ve got! Don’t leave any stone unturned, and don’t let anyone stop you doing what you want to do, particularly if you are in your training. Don’t take your eye off the end goal. If you are in for a two-hour training session, be single minded, and make it a perfect session. Keep making yourself better. Do more than the next guy. Don’t leave anything to chance, work hard, be disciplined, and give yourself every opportunity to maximise your talent.

HM: How often do you think about bowling Viv Richards out on the last ball of the day?

DL: I’d be lying to you if I said it doesn’t flash into my mind every now and then, Hamish! But, I must confess something … I didn’t clean bowl him! It was an inside edge, but I’ll claim it anyway, he was something else as a player. What a guy.

HM: Congratulations on being awarded Legend status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. It’s reserved for very few. There are few bigger names than Lillee and Thorpe, and you are elevated together.

DL: It is such an honour, it really is. It is the who’s who of Australian sport, and I really am humbled. The truth is though, Thorpey shouldn’t be in the same category as me … I should be one below him. He is an Olympic God, and that is an area reserved for very, very few.

HM: From all of us, Dennis, thank you for giving us so much joy over so many years, and remaining so humble doing it.

DL: No problem at all. You’ve always got to remember where you came from, and I hope I have. I enjoyed the chat.

Dennis Lillee, Ian Thorpe, the eight new inductees, the winner of The Don Award as well as The Dawn Award will be honoured in a television special Australia’s Sporting Heroes and Legends — a Celebration of the 2021 Sport Australia Hall of Fame on the Seven Network on December 2, after the Front Bar.