Richard Edwards looks back to when the New Zealanders got one over their trans-Tasman rivals
It’s 30 years since New Zealand won their most recent, and only, Test series in Australia. Then, as now, Australia were in a transitional phase, having returned from an Ashes tour with their tails between their legs and with criticism from the Aussie Press ringing in their ears.
New Zealand, meanwhile, were a team approaching their peak – successfully marrying the prosaic talents of the likes of captain Jeremy Coney and opening bowler Ewen Chatfield, with the poetic brilliance of Martin Crowe and the menace of Richard Hadlee.
The Cricket Paper catches up with Coney, who now lives in England after turning his hand to the art of theatre lighting following his retirement from the game, on the eve of a trans-Tasman clash that could turn out to be the most closely fought since that time.
And after their Rugby World Cup triumph over their near-neighbours at the weekend, Coney hopes that this solitary past triumph can be an inspiration to Brendon McCullum’s present crop during their three-Test series Down Under.
“I was the luckiest captain alive,” he says. “I had world-class players like Hadlee, who was a mechanical genius with the ball and got 33 wickets in that series, 11 wickets a Test match – that has hardly been repeated. He got a good start in the Gabba Test and it just continued from there. He was just a wonderful exponent of control and precision.
“Then we had Martin Crowe who was able to synthesise a science, which is the art of batting, and the craft and the atheistic to make it look quite easy, which is a very skilful thing to do.”
Hadlee’s bowling in the first Test in Brisbane in November 1985 has gone down as one of the single most impressive performances in history. Australia were looking relatively serene in their first innings, with Kepler Wessels and David Boon having taken the hosts to 70-1. Hadlee then reduced their innings to rubble, taking 9-52. He also had a hand in the other wicket to fall – the ninth of the innings – when he took the catch that dismissed Geoff Lawson off the bowling of Vaughan Brown.
“Even though it was slightly jocular, there were a few of us thinking, ‘hmm, I wonder if he’ll catch this one,” says Coney with a smile. “The way that he was bowling, it wouldn’t have taken him long to pick up No.10, I don’t think.”
After dismissing Australia for 179, New Zealand then set about building a match-winning score – and again Hadlee was key.
“I remember Martin Crowe scored a magnificent 180-odd and John Reid scored a century, too,” Coney recalls. “The weather wasn’t great and bad light and rain tends to come into Brisbane around this time of year. The first day was curtailed and so was the second – and at that stage we had a little bit of a lead.
“On the third day we ended up playing in the dark so we could really forge ahead. The umps came over and said they were going to take us off but we said, ‘no thanks, we’ll carry on’. Ian Smith got lost on the surrounding dog track because it was so dark.
“The track ran all the way around the Gabba and you walked over it before you got to a little gate that took you on to the playing surface. All we could hear was Ian trying to find this gate. Richard Hadlee scored a very aggressive 50 at the end of that day playing while Smith was at the other end shouting out things like, ‘that was a very good ball when it left this end Richard, how was it at yours?’”
Hundreds from Border and Greg Matthews took the game into a final day but the Kiwis first innings lead of 374 proved insurmountable as the Aussies crumbled to defeat in front of a near-deserted Gabba. Hadlee added to his first innings haul with 6-71, to give the Kiwi master match figures of 15-123.
The Aussies gained a measure of revenge in the following Test in Sydney, with David Hookes, Boon and Wayne Phillips helping the Aussies to hunt down a target of 260 on a wearing SCG pitch. That four-wicket win left the series poised as the teams headed to Perth for the decider.
“No New Zealand team travels to Australia as favourites and after losing that second Test I think a lot of them thought that was that, normal service had been resumed,” says Coney.
No-one, though, had banked on Hadlee reprising his Brisbane heroics on a WACA pitch tailor-made for him, claiming match figures of 11-145.
Australia’s paltry first innings effort of 203 left them facing an uphill battle – and after Hadlee dismissed Border for 85 in the second dig, New Zealand could already sense a generation-defining triumph.
Appropriately, it was Crowe, batting alongside his brother Jeff, who delivered the final blow, scoring 42 not out as Coney’s side comfortably chased 164 for their first series triumph on Australian soil.
While the Kiwis cracked open the XXXX, a downbeat Border mulled over a decision that could well have altered the course of Test cricket for the next 20 years.
“You start to wonder where you’re heading,” he told the waiting media. “You start to wonder whether you’re the right bloke for the job.” As for Coney, Australia’s woes were the least of his concerns.
“At that stage, the team had been together so long,” he says. “You get past the enthusiasm and get to the point when you really have to work hard to make the whole thing knit together.
“As far as that series went, all of us felt pleased, individually and collectively, to be part of it.”
McCullum will hope his side win the opportunity to experience the same glow, and you can find odds on the series with Matchbook bonus code.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper on Friday November 6, 2015
