Former Australian quick Rodney Hogg talks about making fans cry, selling fake signed baggy greens

In one of the most prickly interviews of 2024, champion quick Rodney Hogg has opened up on his hatred of the MCG, awkward fan interactions – and why he sells fake, signed baggy greens.

Rodney Hogg’s dislike of the MCG is somewhat strange given he took an extremely healthy 32 wickets there at 18.5 in just six Test matches.

Then again many things about Hogg are strange, such as this discussion during the week will attest.

JA: In your first Test at the MCG, you took 5-30 and 5-36 in 1978, yet you still don’t like the place?

RH: There are too many people there and a lot of them want to speak to you. Plus the wind used to swirl meaning you were never actually bowling with it, as I should have been.

JA: Weren’t you presented with two mounted cricket balls in honour of your man-of-the-match performance?

RH: The only things I’ve kept from my career.

JA: Everything else been sold?

Rodney Hogg winds down with a cold drink.

RH: I don’t get as many speaking gigs as I used to, so yes. But the balls are available for sale at the right price.

JA: Good to hear, I was getting worried. You sure you haven’t kept any other cricket memorabilia, such as a baggy green?

RH: I sold that years ago but I have about a dozen fake baggy greens that I sign and sell at functions.

JA: Surely the baggy green means something to you?

RH: You seem obsessed with it. It’s a cap. What, do you want me to do, look like a clown and wear one to Wimbledon?

JA: I remember taking my nephew to the MCG, a young lad who used to idolise you.

RH: I don’t like the past tense usage in that sentence.

Fast bowler Rodney Hogg is surrounded by fans as he leaves the field.

JA: I told him to politely ask you for your autograph between overs when you were fielding at fine leg.

RH: How did that work out for him?

JA: He came back in tears, telling me: “Mr Hogg said, ‘Piss off’.”

RH: As I should have. When Dr Paul Barnard was transplanting hearts, do you reckon there were people annoying him for autographs. The cricket ground was my place of work.

JA: Christiaan, sorry, Paul, wasn’t expected to sign autographs when in a hospital performing surgery.

RH: As I wasn’t when taking 41 wickets at 12.85 against the Poms.

JA: It would be hard for today’s cricketers to understand how bad the MCG pitch was back then?

RH: The MCG between 1977-81 was the worst pitch in the history of Test cricket. If our bowlers today bowled to our current batting line-up, they would be all out for 70.

Rodney Hogg shouts for joy as English opener Geoff Boycott has his middle stump lifted.

JA: Speaking of “worst” parts of cricket, didn’t Greg Chappell once describe you as the worst 12th man in Australian Test history?

RH: He did. It was in Perth when Dennis (Lillee) used his aluminium bat. I was trying to hide in the dressingroom rather than walk out on the ground with a couple of wooden bats looking like a prize dickhead, knowing Dennis would tell me to nick off. And I argued with Greg about his rating of me, because there was a bloke in 1983 who got on the drink when he was 12th man.

JA: I have a memory of you stupidly wandering out of your crease at the MCG against Pakistan and being run out by Javed Miandad.

RH: Dear little “Javie”. If you threw every Test cricketer in history out on the street without a dollar, Javed is the one who would survive. I had seen the Chappells walk out of their crease to pat down parts of the pitch with their bat, so I tried to copy them. And the little mug ran me out.

JA: How did you respond?

RH: I knocked the stumps over with my bat.

JA: How many games were you suspended for?

RH: None. And I was never spoken to by anyone about it. You are hardly going to suspend someone who has 41 wickets at 12.85.

Originally published as Former Australian quick Rodney Hogg talks about making fans cry, selling fake signed baggy greens