High Steaks: What Dougie and Warnie had in common

Cricket legend Doug Walters was a fair dinkum bloke loved by fans. He also says he was Shane Warne’s “smoking mate”. But this is how he finally gave up the habit.

There are great sportsmen that Australians admire, and then there are great sportsmen Australians just love. Like Doug Walters and Shane Warne.

Never took themselves too seriously. Lived life. They drank, they smoked, enjoyed a punt and knew their way around a deck of cards. But, most importantly, they were entertainers.

Two cricketers from different eras, both adored by the Australian public.

“I had a little bit to do with Warnie,” “Dougie” Walters says as we lunch at the Hotel Pennant Hills in Sydney’s north-west, his weekly destination for a feed, a couple of beers and a flutter on the horses.

“He was a smoking mate in my days of puffing away. I’d go for a smoke (at various events), Warnie would be there and we’d have a chin wag.

Cricket legend Doug Walters at Hotel Pennant Hills. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“I think he played in the wrong era. Should have been playing with us (in the 1970s).”

The late great leg spinner was one of Walters’ favourite players.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ve never seen another spin bowler anywhere near as good as Shane.”

“I’ve never seen another spin bowler anywhere near as good as Shane,” Doug Walters said of Warnie. Picture: Hamish Blair/Getty Images

Walters, who turns 79 next week, rates Greg Chappell as the best batsman he played with, Dennis Lillee the finest bowler, and Ian Chappell the standout captain.

But ask him about the quickest bowler and the answer comes as rapidly as the thunderbolts his mate Jeff Thomson sent down to the touring English team in the 1974-75 summer.

Thomson terrorised the tourists and used Colin Cowdrey, who was 41 at the time, as a paintball target.

“Thommo was lightning, fastest I’ve seen and I’ll never see another one as quick,” said Walters, before turning his mind to the second Test in Perth 50 years ago.

The deadly duo of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee.

“Cowdrey batted for almost a session … got hit more times than he got runs.

“He just kept getting thumped by Thommo and Lillee. I said to Ian Chappell, ‘take them off they’re going to kill this bloke’.

“After the last Test of the tour, we went down to their dressing room and Cowdrey had just got out of the shower. He was bruised from his big toes to his neck.”

Walters was a teenage prodigy from the NSW country town of Dungog. In his formative years, he and his brother dug up ants’ nests to build a cricket pitch in the backyard.

They watered and rolled it, and had a strip that took plenty of turn.

“Probably helped my batting against spinners down the track,” he said.

Ian Chappell would think that an understatement. He once described Walters as “the best player of off spin bowling I have seen”.

Doug was 17 years old when selected for NSW, and still a teenager when he made his Test debut in the 1965-66 Ashes opener against England at the Gabba.

A hundred in his first innings was followed by a century in his second Test – only the second Australian to manage the feat – prompting Walters to be tagged “the next Bradman”.

Doug Walters was tagged “the next Bradman”.

A year later he was called up for National Service. At the time, men aged 20 were selected by ballot to join the Army for two years. Some would serve in Vietnam.

Walters did not play Test cricket from February 1966 until January 1968. On his return, he averaged 127 in two Tests against India and earned selection for the 1968 tour to England.

His list of achievements across a 16-year international career is the stuff of dreams. Walters was the first player to make a double century and a century in the same Test, against the West Indies in 1969.

When he peeled off 250 across two days against New Zealand in Christchurch in 1977, it was the highest score made by a No.6 batsman in a Test. Walters remembers it for another reason.

On the night he went to stumps unbeaten on 100-plus, he was at the hotel bar with his batting partner Gary ‘Gus’ Gilmour, who would resume the next day on 3 not out.

At 3am when the bar closed – hours before the resumption of the Test – Walters suggested they have a couple of nightcaps from the minibar in a room he was sharing with spinner Kerry O’Keefe.

“I opened the door and copped this abuse from Kerry,” Walters laughs. “He said ‘get out of here, you’re a disgrace to your country and your team’. So we went to Gilmour’s room for a couple.”

Later that day, Walters reached his double century and Gilmour made his first Test hundred.

Walters is also in a select group of cricketers to have scored a Test century in a session on three separate occasions.

One was against England in Perth in the 1974-75 series, hooking paceman Bob Willis for six off the last ball of the day.

“He’d only given me one short ball that over and I thought ‘fast bowlers can’t help themselves … he’ll give me another one’. When he did, I was on the back foot waiting.”

Typical Walters. Last ball or not, it was there to be hit.

Discussing the modern game, he does find it difficult to reconcile the pay rates for elite players.

Days after Indian superstar Rishabh Pant was contracted to an IPL franchise for almost $5m, Walters said: “It’s ridiculous money but good if you can get it.”

Walters was there when World Series Cricket first allowed players to pocket pay packets that better recognised their contribution and commitment to the game.

Walters was there when Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket first allowed players to pocket pay packets that better recognised their contribution and commitment to the game.

It was the late 1970s and Walters was over the age of 30.

“World Series Cricket meant security,” he said. “It was an easy decision for me to make.”

But Walters admits he never thought cricket would become a conveyor belt of millionaire players.

“It’s progressed a long way,” he said. “We had to have jobs, had to work, had to have companies that were pretty liberal to give you time off and pay us while we were away.”

For Walters, who received an MBE in 1975 and was awarded an AM in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours, some things have stayed the same.

He still lives in the house he and wife Caroline bought 54 years ago.

He also remains involved in the game through coaching, including the under-16 Green Shield team at his former club Cumberland, now Parramatta.

“The kids are great,” he said. “They listen to what I say but I don’t know that they try and put it into practice. All they want to do is play ramp shots and reverse sweeps, all that sort of stuff.”

Rump and T-bone steaks ordered by cricket legend Doug Walters and Peter Jenkins at Hotel Pennant Hills. Picture: Jonathan Ng

As we wrap up the lunch, Walters prepares to get a bus home. But not before he tells of the “easiest thing I’ve ever done” – giving up cigarettes.

It was March 3, 2009, after his great mate, the late Australian golf legend Jack Newton, convinced him to try laser treatment.

“I’m lying on this couch thinking I wish they’d hurry up so I can go downstairs and light one up,” he chuckled. “But I got downstairs and didn’t feel like one. I never felt like a cigarette again.”

Not even when he ran into Warnie.

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