There’s a breathless hush ...

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 22

There’s a breathless hush ...

By

A. K. GRANT

Australian cricket, justice and educational authorities are engaged in frantic efforts to protect the great New Zealand fast bowler, Richard Hadlee, from any further abuse at the hands of Australian cricket crowds.

A bill is being rushed through the Australian Parliament in Canberra making it an offence punishable by a $2OOO fine or three months imprisonment for any person to suggest that Hadlee is of indeterminate parentage, or can’t bowl for toffee. Major Australian breweries, at the behest of the cricket authorities, are offering enormous prizes for groups willing to clink cans in the well-known “dit-dit, dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit-dit, dit-dit,” rhythm, culiminating in enormous, orgiastic cries of “HAD-LEE!” It is hoped that the natural reluctance of Australian crowds to support a New Zealand fast bowler will be overcome by the magnitude of the prizes, which include an all-expenses-paid night out in Melbourne with Bill Lawry and his wife, or a recently repainted and valve-ground 1979 Toyota Starlet, or copies of a training video in which Australian umpires explain how the ball would always have taken out middle stump when a non-Aus-tralian batsman is appealed against for lbw, but would always have passed harmlessly down the leg side whenever there is an appeal for lbw against an Australian batsman. Members of the Australian Federal police and the Aboriginal black trackers will mingle unobtrusively with the crowds at the M C.G. and the S.C.G. during * f

the W.S.C. finals and offenders against the new legislation will receive summary justice in the back of a police van, prior to any appearance in court, though they can elect, if they wish, in order to get the matter disposed of, to have their lawyer with them, in the police van, making representations on their behalf while the summary justice is meted out. And the situation is not being allowed to rest there. At a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday, Hadlee suggested that the abuse to which he had been subjected brought into question the Australian education system. The Federal Minister of Learning People Things, Senator Greg Bruce, agrees.

“Thanks largely to 40 years of Liberal-Country Party misrule,” he says, “we have bred an entire lost generation of youngsters unable to perceive that Richard Hadlee is the greatest bowler the world has ever known, and as such should be immune from the coarse taunts and jibes to which lesser cricketers may be required to expose themselves. Obviously we can’t reform a national education system overnight, and many of the current offenders have left school anyway, so we will have to leave them to be dealt with by the new legislation.

"But what we can and will do, starting from Monday, is ensure that every Standard One class will devote one hour a week to a new subject, to be called Richard Hadlee Appreciation, and at tertiary level the Federal Government will endow a Chair of Richard Hadlee Studies at the Australian National University. In these ways we may be able to make some amends for our €

shaming as a nation.” Meanwhile, a spokesman for Richard Hadlee Enterprises Pty Inc. has rejected a suggestion made by the Australian test allrounder, Greg Matthews, that what Hadlee has had to put up with was “light treatment” compared with the abuse, death threats and so forth that Matthews endured at the hands of New Zealanders during the Australians’ ’B5-’B6 tour of New Zealand. “No valid comparison can be made,” the spokesman said. “In

the first place, Greg Matthews is not the greatest bowler the world has ever seen. In the second place, any criticism of Matthews by New Zealand crowds, albeit somewhat vociferously expressed, would have been based on a stern but just and fair assessment of the man's capabilities. That is the way we do things in New Zealand. "In the third place, and let’s not beat about the bush, the guy’s an Australian. What does he expect? I mean, who won the war?" "f