New Zealand has waited 32 years to ‘get one back’ on Australia after lbw call goes against them in 1987 Boxing Day Test
It was the umpiring decision that saved Australia and denied New Zealand a famous Boxing Day Test victory, a frustration that still runs deep across the Tasman. Kiwi great Ian Smith says “it’s time to get one back”.
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Danny Morrison was only 21, playing just his second Test, when he bowled the ball that should have delivered New Zealand a Boxing Day miracle.
It was 1987 and Morrison, who five years earlier was sprung by his teacher wagging school in Auckland to watch Dennis Lillee and Sir Richard Hadlee “lock horns” at Eden Park, was steaming in from the members’ end at the MCG trying to win a Test match with his hero.
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His whites looked like they’d been painted red, having spent a long hot day trying to shine a ball which Hadlee used to keep the Kiwis alive.
Hadlee said his team was “never really in the match” until the final session on the last day when New Zealand’s greatest bowler went into overdrive.
Australia was chasing 247 to win and at 5-176 before tea looked like, as Hadlee said, to be “cruising” to the win.
The Kiwi marvel was 36 years old and had bowled a massive 44 overs in Australia’s first innings. But he had one more push in him.
Hadlee got rid of the last recognised batsman Mike Velleta for 39 after the break, then ’keeper Greg Dyer and Victorian Tony Dodemaide, on Test debut, in quick succession.
Suddenly Australia was 9-227. Only Craig McDermott and Mike Whitney, the bunny’s bunny, stood between the Kiwis and victory, in just their third ever Boxing Day Test.
But time started to tick down, balls too — from 30 to go, then 20, then 10, as the Australian duo stood firm.
Then Morrison, his mullet flapping on the back of his sweaty neck, eight balls left in the match, bowled a pearler.
He released it from right next to umpire Dick French, just like he had seen Hadlee do so many times.
It started straight, then tailed in and went right through McDermott, slamming into his front pad.
“He’s gone right through him,” Ian Chappell screamed in commentary.
The entire Kiwi team appealed. Morrison was pleading, down on his haunches. It just looked out.
French bent over, studiously, hands on both knees, and had a good look at it.
The crowd at the MCG, baked by the December sun, held its collective breath.
Then with a slight shake of his head French, umpiring his 19th and last Test match, quietly said “no” and stood back upright.
Morrison, unbelieving, rocked back and ended up on his backside on the pitch.
“It was missing leg and missing off. It looked like it would cannon into middle, halfway up,” Morrison said from Pakistan this week where he’s working as a commentator.
“When you look back you think, well of course Dick French is going to be a bit biased, but it wasn’t just a decision to win a Test match, it stopped the series.
“It would have made the series one-all. It had that much hanging on it. And Australia hadn’t won a series at home since the retirement of Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh.
“When you throw all that in to it, you could see how massive it was.”
IT WAS DEFINITELY OUT
Morrison finished his over to McDermott with a short ball, which the Australian fended off safely.
Wicketkeeper Ian Smith, a senior member of the team, went to Morrison after he grabbed his floppy hat from French and put both his gloves on Morrison’s cheeks.
“He was immensely deflated,” Smith, in Melbourne to work with Fox Cricket on the Boxing Day Test, recalled this week.
“He was just a kid and he could have had a great moment in his cricketing life, and Dick French denied him that. In a sense that was quite cruel. But we had to keep going.”
Smith couldn’t remember exactly what he said to Morrison in that moment, but he has an inkling.
“It would have been, ‘You were robbed of one of the great moments in your life, but you have to keep going,’ or something like that,” Smith said.
“Everyone to a man, even the guys standing square of the wicket, figured it was pretty close.
“I’m behind the wicket, but I’d been behind the wicket for 30 years. I kind of know what’s straight and what’s not, what’s going over and what’s not. That wasn’t missing. I can promise you that.
“We were quite dismayed about the whole thing.”
But there were six balls left to get the series-levelling wicket.
COOKED KIWIS
Hadlee destroyed Australia in 1985, taking a staggering 33 wickets in a three-Test series which New Zealand won 2-1, its first series victory in Australia.
He returned in 1987 as a villain and a target for the Australian crowds who decided that Hadlee was so good that he was a “wanker”.
“That’s the tour where that chant started, ‘Hadlee’s a wanker’,” Morrison said.
“He brings a bit to the table and the Aussies knew it. It got to him, too.
“We were playing the PM’s XI in Canberra and Sir Richard had a bit of a crack at the function to Bob Hawke, who was Prime Minister. Bob just laughed it off and said, ‘That’s because you are, you’re too good’.
“In a way you could understand it, because ‘Paddles’ (Hadlee), a little bit could get under his skin, but at the same time it lifted him. It was a sign of respect in that oxymoronic way.”
In the opening Test of the 1987-88 series at the Gabba, Hadlee only took three wickets as Australia won convincingly.
But Hadlee was still New Zealand’s major weapon and took 10 wickets at the MCG. Remarkably, six of those scalps were via lbw decisions all given by the other umpire, Tony Crafter.
So it was no surprise Hadlee was given the responsibility to bowl that last over.
On top of his 44 overs the first innings, Hadlee had pushed through another 30 in the second, all on the final day.
His 31st was suddenly the most important.
“I remember it being very hot, energy sapping heat,” Smith said.
“There was a wow factor in Perth last weekend when Neil Wagner hit the 60-over mark. Add another 15 on to that and you get an indication of the workload for Richard Hadlee.
“The MCG can get pretty warm, it was a cauldron back then, every bloke was feeling it.
“Richard Hadlee, for me had absolutely no energy in the tank, that was the problem. Had his energy levels been even half-full he might have snuck one through Mike Whitney. But he was just gassed, he couldn’t race in and give it everything.
“He was still our best, but Whitney handled it. It was good from his point of view, but crap from ours.”
Two went passed the outside edge of Whitney with every fielder around the bat — four slips, catchers at cover and midwicket.
But Hadlee couldn’t muster one last piece of magic.
The match ball ended up in Smith’s gloves after Whitney bunted the final delivery back to the bowler, who had a frustrated throw at the stumps.
But the Kiwi ’keeper had no desire to keep it, and gave it to the Aussie who, with McDermott, survived 30 balls to draw a Test Smith to this day thinks his team should have won.
“We weren’t interested in that type of trophy,” Smith said.
“We were pretty deflated about the whole deal. We had never won at the MCG.
“And we weren’t to know, at all, that it would be 32 years before the next lot would get a go.”
Smith hasn’t been back for the Boxing Day Test since, a combination of home games for the Kiwis on the same day and also not wanting to.
He can’t wait to get there this time, to feel the rush again.
“It’s such a huge occasion for a New Zealand cricketer, it’s tantamount to playing on Lord’s, except Lord’s welcomes us a lot more often,” he said.
“This is an opportunity not many people get.
“And I’ve never known the level of interest this Test has created.
“It’s time to get one back.”
Originally published as New Zealand has waited 32 years to ‘get one back’ on Australia after lbw call goes against them in 1987 Boxing Day Test