Sir Ian Botham Talks About The Time He Bowled To Dennis Lillee Using An Aluminium Bat

'Look Dennis, you can't have that'


Article heading image for Sir Ian Botham Talks About The Time He Bowled To Dennis Lillee Using An Aluminium Bat

Image: Triple M Cricket/YouTube

Dennis Lillee was famously a bloke you didn’t want to fire up.

But Sir Ian Botham and his captain at the time Mike Brearley managed to do just that in 1979 when they complained about the aluminium bat Lillee had brought out with him at the WACA.

A friend of Lillee’s had started a company manufacturing the metal bats, and big DK brought one of his creations out with him to the middle when he walked out.

Sir Ian spoke about his memories of the incident on Triple M Cricket’s coverage of the SCG Test today.

Listen to Beefy’s story here:

 

“I was bowling… [I had] a new ball, and it came back as if someone had sandpaper all over it,” Botham said.

“Mike Brearley said ‘look Dennis, you can’t have that.

“You never wanted to sort of upset Dennis too much, you gotta go the gently, gently approach.

“But with that, he turned and hurled it!”

Beefy said that the bat wasn’t even a good one.

“He had a half volley, and he hammered it with this aluminium bat and it trickled — trickled — back to me,” he said.

“But with half the ball missing!”

“That should be in a museum somewhere, that bat,” Mick Molloy said.

James Brayshaw said that the 12th man flatly refused to retrieve the bat and give Lillee a willow version.

“I love Rodney Hogg being 12th man too, sent to take the proper bat out there and he actually refused to go!” JB said.

“So Greg Chappell, the captain, had to walk the bat out!”

Check out vision of Lillee using his aluminium bat and chucking it away here — pay attention to the sound the ball makes when it hits the bat:

 

For more stuff like this, make sure you download the Triple M app and keep up to date with the catch up podcast at the end of each day’s play.

Rudi Edsall

4 January 2018

Article by:

Rudi Edsall




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