Story Time 264 - Wave cash at me in the Brunswick Ballroom

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whiteplains. New York.

This is the final word story time story time number two hundred and sixty four. That is correct.

That's how many of them we have done. Jeff Leman and Daniel Norcross joining me for another

wander through the lanes and byways of crickets history two hundred and sixty four is the number

that nobody could get for a very long time. It was one of the last bastions of unscored test

scores until until Tom Latham got it in 2018 not out against Sri Lanka in Wellington and the

Rick Finlay's of this world could take a deep breath of relief and cross that one off their lists.

Oh, so which is? I'm bound to ask this question. I'm sorry. I bet you don't have it in front of you.

But what is now the lowest? It was it was two twenty nine for ages wasn't it and I don't

think wait there's somebody knocked off two twenty nine or it's two twenty nine still there.

Which we can test cricket only aren't we yeah obviously we're talking test I mean everything's been

made in first class cricket that's absolutely ridiculous ridiculous sample size there where you

can get mostly anything once you start getting up above the two sixties there are quite a few that

haven't been made there are some two some in the two seventies and even later in the two sixties

that haven't been scored I believe but two to nine did Kane Williams didn't get a two twenty nine

I'm just scrolling through nope two to nine has still not been achieved so two to nine is the

lowest okay scored test scored seems pretty doable if somebody were to set their minds to it if

somebody wanted it enough so we can wait for that let's do a giveaway at the start of the show why

not stomping ground are a lovely brewery in Melbourne they are the most Melbourne brewery you can

imagine they're involved with everything that is Melbourne with the footy with the comedy festival

with the the palace foreshore festival down it's a kilter that I went to some great gigs out

over the summer saw Grace Jones play down there she was magnificent what an icon she's like

seventy six years old or something and still getting carried around the stage by burly men and

singing upside down in thrones and doing all kinds of things and of course stomping ground was for

sale there of course it was it was being handed over the bars at the Meredith's golden planes

music festival they're involved with everything they've got their their share off or you can buy

into the brewery at the moment if that's your sort of thing all the infos in the show notes

the giveaway two cases a week why not I've pulled these out of the the world the spread sheet has

spat them out in randomized order Sam Alice you have won a case of stomping ground and bill fuller

you have won a case of stomping ground Sam just joined like a few weeks ago just join patron

that's how you enter go to patreon.com slash the final word and sign up or if you're already

signed up like bill who signed up a year and a half ago you just raise your pledge by any amount

and you are in the running and they've both done that so you can do that in either of those

ways if you'd like to support the show and send us a nerd pledge which normally happens on the

patreon website right normally that's how it happens somebody sends in a number an amount of

currency it relates to cricket we have to figure out what it means and then we try to tell the story

but I'm going to start Daniel with an unorthodox method of nerd pledging this this pledge you

could have called up to my bumper I might and she didn't do that one and of course it was

outstanding now come out man did not sign up to patreon and did not send in a nerd pledge

on the internet come out man approached me in a in an evening venue in Melbourne in the

Brunswick ballroom in December waving a fifty dollar note and said I have a nerd pledge and I'm

going to give you fifty dollars in cash all right well that's it in some ways that's the best

of nerd pledges it does make a counter a little bit tricky and collo may not be 100% sure what's

going on but you know collo doesn't need to know if he was there any of us anywhere in any any night

club and a hand over fifty dollars or fifty pounds or even just convert fifty dollars into roughly

twenty five pounds then I'll know a pledge for you that's it you get there there are ways

to get onto this show but you know I asked it we we still waited the appropriate amount of time

it's about a three month lag usually so we've done that we haven't let anybody jump the list in

in any unfair or unreasonable way because there was cash changing hands john law style cash

for comment well the lean you know what I mean but fifty bucks in the Brunswick ballroom does get

you on to the list and Camel also didn't send a number Camel just said I'll send you an email

and tell you what I want you to talk about so here we go okay Camel wants me to talk about

a I think it's fair to say fairly obscure western Australian cricketer from the early 1960s named

Ian Gellash that's that's that's obscure to me yeah I don't know anything about himself is he

he sounds Hungarian yeah not Goulash I'm sorry Gellash might be maybe Scotty is sure something

that kind of name and I think I don't know if this is the only reason but Camel works with the

niche of Ian Gellash and I don't know if that's the only reason that we're talking about Ian Gellash

but it may be one of the reasons here we are 11 first class games exactly the sort of statistical

archival presence that you would expect with 11 first class games Daniel in that there is a

cricket in faux page but it's completely bare bones just the basic numbers there is a Wikipedia

page but it literally says Ian Gellash was a cricketer who played 11 games western Australia and

that's it okay so he's I mean that's actually quite a tricky task you said you're there yes yes

and this this may be a theme today of the difficulty in researching people about who there's not much

digitally available and I'm gonna have to get into some paper research which is difficult to do

from Portugal but here we go I find it interesting that if you have a life sort of no matter what

you've done and how broad and rich it's been and all the experiences you you may have had and you've

watched ships on fire off the shoulder of around and see Ben's glitter in the 10 hours of gate now

you can do all of that but the only thing that will go on here Wikipedia page is if you played

representative sport for some state or country they'll say this met you play this many games and

that's it that's all that meets the line for notability that's what makes the record I did find a

handful of photos of Ian Gellash who he's you know it's a pleasant looking well assembled human being

you know tidally put together it was a sort of slightly sharp face with with confidently reasonably

sized ears not very tall fits my idea if you said imagine a seam bowler who's decent but not

blowing teams away this is the kind of fire I would I would visualise so slightly wispy

perhaps I don't know is it more more bril cream era I think more sort of dark hair

pull back shizzle back from the brow not chiseled scary no no but the pointy

granite head pointy angular angular nose angular chin sharp looking you know like you cut through

your die yeah I know I know I don't call it dredge yeah now when you get confused with Australian

seasons given that they span years and you say you know this person debuted in 1962 slash 63

this is literally the case for Ian Gellash because he debuted in a match spanning years eve

so that wouldn't happen to a lot of players I wouldn't imagine that their first match is literally

in two different years and finished up on the first of January and normally get the day off don't

you would have either the day before or the day on it you normally have the day off but not at

those days neither of them New Year's Eve in the 1960s was an American confection you know the

ball in time Square and all that and in Australia we didn't have fucking time for New Year's Eve

we had quick to play we had minds to dig we had shit to do right there was no it's like they used

to play at least a big football on Christmas day for years and years and years and the

and the the the fixtures that it's normally hilarious because the players are so clearly hammered

from the night before but if you get it's one of those great things you go under the internet and

look for Christmas Day first division results 1963 say and it'll be West Ham United 7 Tottenham

lots per five just a whole series of utterly fucked defenders it's got to bother to track back

that's better isn't it isn't that better oh so much better yeah why can't we have that now

to all football yeah we should just hand the cap footballers especially the defenders you know

just make it hard lacking motivation well they're just better now and so it's not very

interesting because nobody scores so I just have a sort of as they come down the tunnel onto

the field there's a compulsory shot you know they've got they've got to have a couple of shots before

they head under the field you know and today's Barclay sponsored shot is the B 52 you know you

got to have three of them before at the beginning of each half you know yeah yeah yeah

and the umpire has to the referee has to drink a spritz you know they've got they've got to have

a campari spritz with three olives you know you know football and you know sport and within no time

at all it would be young women of 22 dressed in short skirts with tequila shots in a bent

handing them out and it would all become like you know boxing and and the beautiful idea that we

had which was really a butler with a silver tray and a B 52 or a you know what's that one

where you have Red Bull and something else what's it called the one that I was the one that the

blowers had when he went out to a nightclub in 2016 with a couple of I think a couple of might

have been Michael Vaughan somebody else and yes it's it's supposed to be it's restorative but you

know he was getting on even then and I do know what I can't and what they called now but you

basically you sink this it's like a vodka or something into a right like a death charge situation

and then you whack it back and right before you know it you're basically talking 10 if it doesn't

any other way so far but I'm only I've only ever heard of a you know a vodka Red Bull being called

a vodka Red Bull which is not very inventive but something with Red Bull in it is not a cocktail

it doesn't deserve a name it does not deserve to the dignity of a name nonetheless drug football

is aside this is an era for Western Australia where there are some interesting names on these

scorecards Alan Jones the British one the Welsh one is playing for WA I believe at that point

Barry Sheppard's knocking about Terry Jenner's knocking about not much to write home about on

debut for Ian Gellers wickedness during a big South Australian score and then WA get bold out twice

following on Les Favill makes a ton Gary Sobers is there Chapelli's at number seven I love a

scorecard of early Chapelli at number seven when he was bowling league spin and they hadn't really

figured out if you could bat yet great stuff spinner that Alan Jones but what does that that

Schrodinger's test cricket or isn't that Alan Jones yes six cabinet six 96 yeah even though

that wasn't technically the case so Ian Gellers has his moment in game two after WA or all out for

116 turns around and balls out the VIX for 121 cleans up the tail six overs four for 18 which

remain his best figures in first class cricket throughout his fairly brief career Ian Redpath

chases down a total though for the VIX to win first win for WA for Ian Gellers in his third match

against Queensland takes three for 57 and three for 50 including some names who've come up on

the show before Jack McLaughlin who was a commentator of the Queenslander Sam Trimble the great

Queensland name Graham Bizzle who we've talked about on the show before as well so those are the

three games Ian Gellers plays that season plays again the next season a couple against the touring

South Africans there's a WA game where he smashes 30 not out at number 10 which will be his highest

first class score forever not much in the way Wickets though and in that's in the first of those

then there's a there's a Western Australian combined 11 scorecard the WA CXI meaning that 40 50

years before the Caxi we had the Waxi which is a beautiful thing that I didn't know existed

that the the the the Waxi existed in the early 1960s and because it's a combined 11 they have

totally painful but only for a short period time which is not our first class cricket is usually

described because it's a combined 11 they can play fast and loose with who's in it so Bob Simpson

plays in this team Richie Beno plays in it Norma Neil plays in it along with Alan Jones and a

bunch of the WA lot crazy scorecard 207 versus 161 on the two first innings then Eddie Barlow

makes a double Graham Pollock makes a tonne they set the Waxi 579 to win and then Bob Simpson makes

a double Richie Beno at first drop makes a tonne wobble in the middle order and then Gath McKenzie

who's playing for WA in this era as well is involved in a partnership of some substance takes them

to 7 for 524 so their 55 runs away three wickets in hand well set and then Peter Pollock hasn't

been able to do this for the South Africans but Graham Pollock comes on RC bastard like 7th or 8th

bowl and they've used and immediately picks up both set players then nine wickets down

and the winners evaporated but Ian Galaish has to come out and bat out the draw with Hugh Bevan

and does so they they see out the game and draw at nine wickets down which is always what's a score

again how close were they was it still 50 or short yeah they didn't score many after that point

I think both the last two players were two not out so they'd rather given up the runs at that

stage at nine down Ian Galaish wasn't much chop with the bat you kind of think just just breathe

aside or that you kind of think that if it's the Waxi and you're chasing 517 nine just yep does

it matter if you lose or wouldn't it be much much bigger story that we would never forget

Joe Frey and the annals of history forever to chase 517 nine then go yep oh do you remember that

game when we got a draw when we were chasing 517 nine oh wasn't it great yeah we were nine down

yeah I mean no one will ever forget where they were when we drew that game this is the thing

about cricketers brains and I had it myself when I used to play it's way more important that your

opponent doesn't win than you do it's a mean sport isn't it yeah remember when we stopped

those pricks from winning yeah basically remember when we made sure that nobody was happy

yeah that's it that's exactly what the game is basically yeah used to be yeah

remember when we could have made 11 people happy but we made sure that 22 people were unhappy

yeah yeah I'm not sure how much time they had left in the game to be fair I wasn't able to extract

that information from the scorecard so but if you've got a guy who's just clubbed 30 not out at

number 11 well he should have been at 11 but there was an injured player against the same attack

in the previous game you think we'll let him do it again let's get the last 50 and win this thing

anyway that didn't happen played six more shield games that season Western Australia were not very

good at the time kept having to follow on or there'd be a tiny chase in the fourth innings or

a slow draw so basically he's bowling one innings per game there's a three for an a four for

but there's a lot of lower order wickets so he's a baller who chips in but never really grabs a

game by the scruff of the neck final game against south Australia a couple of things to note in

his two for one is that one of the wickets is Les Favill caught behind for 21 who's an opener so

Ian Gallowish doesn't dismiss a lot of openers so that's something and the other is that the second

wicket is a Garfield St. Auburn sobers who is dismissed for 195 so I don't know how good Ian Gallowish

was feeling about that but at least he got him in the end was south Australia still go big and

win the game but there we are now after this after this season this 63 64 season he goes to play

league cricket in the English summer of 1964 for a team whose pronunciation you will have to

help me with C-O-L-N-E in the Lancashire leagues is that cold well actually cold yeah I mean probably

although the thing about Lancashire is that you know they pronounce the two words spelled great

hardwood as grittored so grittored yeah grittored yeah use but if it gets old and so you know there's

absolutely no real way of saying how you're supposed to say it but I think you'll find we're cold

right if there's ever some sort of brawl at great hardwood would they say it was grittored as

violence yeah they would probably they would be a wag that my like yeah all right well

colon if we may had a good time looking at the colon cricket club website fun day 2026

looked like fun inflatable dinosaur suits having a good time perhaps they're going to head off

to fight fascism in those after they finished having fun day 2026 they play at a team called

the horse field although there's no e in horse field of course because I don't know things have

to be quite but there are a lot of horse fields involved in cricket the Hollywood cricket club started

mean by old mate Aubrey Smith in the 1930s ended up becoming a horse field if you go out to their

original site at Griffith Park in Los Angeles you'll find a horse field same goes for Wattel flat

where Wattel flat beat the H.H. Stevenson touring team in the 1860s that's also an equestrian

facility these days so here's another horse field now Joe Skidairy played for colon at one point

Colors King played for Col but they they weren't flush they're the oldest club in the Lank's League

but they didn't tend to buy the big name imports like some of the other league clubs were able to do

they tried to pick good young overseas players and this is what they did when they got Ian Galesh

coming into play for them did make some runs couple of 50s some 30s and 40s but more importantly

took bags goodness me Ian Galesh rocked up six for 42 in his third game eight for 24 in a couple of

games after that at one point had a run of 28 wickets in five innings in league cricket

Ian Galesh was cleaning up weekend week out and across a season of 26 matches

scored his runs at just under 20 400 and change runs in in that season but 94 wickets at 9.6

going all right SF Barnes kind of areas so Ian Galesh found it a lot easier in the league than he did

in the shield and and that's his cricketing sort of high level cricket in Korea plays the one

season and then had to go and get a job because you know you couldn't really make a living

playing cricket around that time there's one last bit which is that Kamal managed to get hold

through Ian's family of this amazing scorecard it like a not a foot not a filled out scorecard

but a team list I suppose you would call it from a benefit match that was played for the benefit

of Charlie Steyer's that Charlie Steyer's Daniel was a guy and ease fastballer who deserves

a story time entry of his own in the span of 17 first class matches Charlie Steyer's played

into island cricket in the Caribbean played four tests for the West Indies and won the Ranji trophy

for Bombay wow went and played a season of Ranji played in the final and Bombay usually won it

but bloody hell rocked up and bowled in a Ranji trophy final then went to England in 63 played

league cricket there and by 64 was wanting to study to lead cricket so Garfield Sobers stages

a benefit match for him in 1964 now there's this beautiful old card in this like lovely orange

red printed ink played in the north of England there are so many Caribbean players was is there a

West Indies tour to England in that summer of 63 I think was that was the Calgary game wasn't it

with a broken element lords might have been but I'm not sure if Ian Galish is there in 63

because his league season is 64 so he may have gone to England two years running so this may have

been the previous year perhaps but there are so many great Caribbean names in both teams

still Oliver's playing Basel butchers playing Rowan can I sobers himself Wesley Hall is on the list

Claremont de Pisa the leaning tower still holds record for the seventh wicket but she was in test

cricket lester kings playing Charlie Griffiths playing Cammy Smith is playing Seymour Nurse Roy

Gilchrist Lance Gibbs Chester Watson and Reg Scarlett all these West Indies players across these two

teams for this bloke with this brief 17 match first class career there's a couple of Indian

players in their booty can there Vijay Bose Slayer playing the Australians Terry Lee you played for

New South Wales and and Galish is the other Australian in this fixture got the invitation from Sobers

who he'd played against now probably not because Garfield Sobers was like wow that guy who got me

out when I was on 195 what a player irresistible have to get him in this team but probably out of

respect for what he was doing in the leagues itself he was tearing up the league in that one

season that he played in Galish and and Sobers would have recognized that so I don't have the

score for that game I can't tell you what happened in it I just know what the elevenths were

and how they were set up what I think to do what I think to be invited by Garfield Sobers to play

in this remarkable match and I wish I knew what happened in it maybe we can find that out but

I'm going to have to defer to others to try to find that information which is going to be buried

at a level that even I cannot dig down to from here that's absolutely beautiful story and the number

of course is 50 point not not didn't cash exactly the number was a relic the number is how many

years I could spend trying to find that scorecard if it even exists digging through there I don't

even know which which club it would be under the auspices of or which ground it was played at so

yeah it would be a mission but if anybody knows anything about the benefit match for Charlie

Stayers in 1963 or 64 please do let me know beautiful story beautiful story I think we should

go to a break now and get it done early and then we can do what we want to do after that we can

no one can they can't tell us we can't stay up late and play loud music Daniel we can do what we want

to do we've done the giveaway we should mention Morris Blackburn the number one plaintiff law firm

in Australia the greatest comeback series the competition we've been running with people have

been sending in their stories about their greatest comeback some cricket related some not cricket

related you can keep sending those in for the time being info at final word cricket dot com even if

it doesn't get read out on the show it can still win the competition and Adams the one who has all

the details about the competition but there is a competition there is a prize we're going to

figure all of that out well we sort of know what's going on but the reasons that will make

themselves clear in time we're keeping some of that close to our chest but Morris Blackburn help

people make come backs that's that's the gist that's the link that's the hook is that if you're a

worker and you're injured at your workplace if you're ill and you're entitled to compensation through

some mechanism or other and you don't know your way around the legal system and you're up against

somebody else who has a lot more money and a lot more clout you go to Morris Blackburn they do a lot

of work on a no-win no-feed basis which means they will assess your case and if they think you have

a strong one they will represent you because they're that confident that they're going to get the

right result for you so that speaks to the kind of integrity of the work that they do and the

fact that they're sticking up for working Australians and have been doing since 1919 links in the

show notes look them up we'll be back in a moment spring break isn't what it used to be it's better

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this is the final word story time number 264 a word for our friends at C bus who support the show

and help make sure that it gets to you C bus superannuation superannuation is a pension fund

in Australia if you're from the UK that's not particularly relevant for you to know but

you might be curious we've talked about payday super a lot I'll throw in a reminder this time

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looking after your money for a time and making sure that workers have the appropriate insurance

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to determine if cbus is the right fit for you past performance is not an indicator of future

performance but Daniel you're up it is time for you and the next clue the next pledge is coming in

from friend of the show white line wireless alumni from all the way back in the day handsome

hammy goodman has sent through four dollars twenty one which for some reason patron decided

insisted had to be four dollars twenty two and wouldn't let him change the four dollars twenty

one but he insisted is four twenty one that is the number and uh well hammy initially just said

this he said it was it related to a drought breaker and let's stick with that let's stick with

yeah because the good because this because the first part of the story is trying to deep deep

pick decouple consciousness decouple myself from hammy goodman and try to make sense of the four

twenty one which he never can he's got stickability hammy right okay so we'll pick up the story

after the first part of the story because part of the story on story time i'm sure many of you

are aware of the story on story time is us trying to work out what the god damn hell you're talking

about and again hammy was cryptic let's face it it's a drought breaker okay so we have got a fabulous

group of nerd pet suits but a little bit like the q i elves they they hustle and bustle and they

rummage and they gaze and they wonder sometimes we don't need them like last week we had a lovely

easy one about summer set 1979 sometimes we really do need them and when they come to our aid i cannot

tell you how grateful we are how much we love them and i genuinely like sometimes look at my wife

and think i can't remember when you did something as beautiful for me as what the nerd pledge sleuth

just done right now in making sense of this unbelievable clue and you know look i love my wife we've

been together thirty years and she's been really good to me but you know the the sorts of things

in the nerds place sleuths do are sometimes above and beyond even exorial duties on this occasion

they were i would say flamux they came up with some suggestions none of which actually

proved to be increasingly desperate suggestions he's now i would describe it yeah well there's

look there's there's a lot of south australian input within the nerd pledge sleuths before we get

to that yep there was you know cap 421 was Nathan lion was he a drought breaker i mean in a sense

he's an australian offspinner who's actually taken a lot of wickets as opposed to every other

australian offspinner there's ever been i mean there've been some decent australian offspinners but

you know there isn't a two trumballicator yeah yeah very good one one forty two was it yeah so

something like that you've got your tin maze of this world yep you're actually mallets but you know

could name no big dogs no it could in a way if i felt like it and i came up with nothing else

he could have broken the drought as this first australian offy to take 200 wickets because

let's face it pretty much every other country's got an offy with 200 wickets you're wasting it is with

lance games you're england with yep grams one grams one yeah yeah yeah i'm not sure if i'd have

African noise left arm left arm i yeah and indeed i'm not too sure about new zealand but you know the

the what's india harbajan they're they're they're all over the place offies offies have thrived

all over the world but not so much in australia so could that have been a drought

yeah i didn't feel quite right um we're looking up four for twenty one so i had a fixation with

gel go on or i couldn't make it fit and then i thought is it my Kendrick i'm thinking of i couldn't

make that fit i couldn't make it work with droughts then the sleuths went down a fabulous

south australian rabbit hole which was hangar yeah well could if you say drought

drought breaking to me i think i think queen sland winning the shields or i think south australia

winning the shield within a couple of seasons of each other in the mid-90s those are those are

the big australian cricket droughts yeah i mean i think the one they became utterly fixated on

was a very recent jeffield shield final um would it been even last years i think it might have

it yeah yes last year uh where south australia sort of broke a drought the numbers within the

game made no sense but then everybody became convinced that it could be the time at which they'd

won so is it was it four twenty one well looked around i found that it was four fifty but then

hang on a minute what if our man didn't find out the result for a minute afterwards and was in

queen sland in april that happened for twenty one that would have been four twenty one so i was

being encouraged down a particularly unpleasant path at that stage and i didn't feel comfortable

putting my name to that solution but i did end up watching the highlights of that just to be on

the safe side in case i needed to talk about it well done south australia it's lovely to have

to have broken that drought and then wait a minute i thought i might have a lighted upon it

because there's nothing more that australian wants to hear about than the exploits of joe root

because i know incredibly fondly australian i've taken to joe root i mean the higher

regard in the higher regard he has held the very very higher regard for a man who until very recently

hadn't got a hundred in australia and you can average about thirty yeah something well about

thirty five i think that was what's even more weird about it and actually something that's very

weird about root maths is something i'm gonna tell you a little bit about joe root because if you

take out all hundreds he's garbage yeah that's right if you take out the forty one hundreds

completely useless he's got at least four thousand fewer runs until you're one

yeah well a bit more than that with the with the double hundreds as well yeah he did have a drought

he had quite a famous drought actually in 2020 when it's a very very rare year for him when he

didn't get a test match hundred but what's particularly peculiar about it is that his drought

between hundreds in his drought between hundreds he averaged get this spookaloo 42.1 oh that's

good oh it's a lot of half centuries isn't it to average 42.1 without a single hundred i mean

is that crawly please take note you know many sins would be forgiven if you could get to that

heavy height yeah and wait for it because it gets even spookier and this is when i convince myself

that hammie goodman actually might have wanted this story to be told in full when he broke his drought

with a double hundred against sholanker in 2021 he's called 226 out of a score of 421 oh yeah

better than 50 percent to hammie at that point you were going to get 10 minutes on joe roots

covid year which is exactly what story time was not asking for but it was going to be a lesson

it was going to be a lesson to all of you nerd pledges that be careful what you wish for

because the thing about us is and i'm not making great claims that this isn't our first rodeo

is it jeff so there isn't a single number that can ever flamux us if i can find edgidins on page

1,1882 when a pledge is 11.82 there isn't a number out there that we can't force to fit a story

the question is is that the story you want yes so yes in an act of i thought incredible

reasonableness you went back to hammie and said hammie we might want a little bit more here

this is the rough area that we're going down we're looking in sheffield shield territory we're

thinking about those droughts he came back to and he said basically you're on the right lines

didn't he well he said yes sheffield shield and then he pointed out the fact which really added

some texture to this so when handsome hammie g turns up and says my father a glamorous gary

good man played sheffield shield cricket for this state and then as we as it transpired i mean

now this is real e and gala sherry is but maybe like the e and gala shabatting in that glamorous

gary goodman has a briefish career in the middle band you would say the Ed middle band

where there's a qualified amount of success but you know not the raging stat torrent that you

see from some other players but glamorous gary played four south australias so there was that

possibility but only four of his matches and then played another 20 seven i'm going to say from

memory for tazmania and tazmania are a team that also have some droughts in their history

well they do so that sent me into a very fruitful area because the longest of droughts you'd

probably say for tazmania because conceptually i know not not the longest of droughts from the moment

they started playing but certainly from the moment they were conceived and then not taken remotely

seriously there's a couple of things that i've been to australia a few times now and

i'm starting to understand the culture of australia a little bit better and for example you know

i fully understand that western australia is in some ways the yorkshire of australia and in some

crucial ways he's not he's in the sense that everyone has a chip on their shoulder yeah there's

a deep exceptionalism not everyone and there are very very reasonable people in both places and

there are also some fairly unreasonable people in both places please please don't allow

that don't trample on my wild generalizations sure so just broadly this is a broad broad brush

piece this guy said don't at me as i believe you say um not anymore they don't and of course

i've come to realize that the northern territories aren't a state i realized that a long time ago

i didn't really realize what that meant in terms of the way every other australian thinks about

people from the northern territories so they're sort of seeing almost like they're kind of

untimension it would appear to me and then politically speaking and it's only one it's singular it's

an northern territory there are there are no multiple territories right sorry some more learning for

you yeah northern territory um i've come to realize that everybody gangs up on queens land

all because of Pauline Hanson and because they won't do daylight savings time which is

was an interesting part of trying to make this squeeze into 421 incidentally all because of the cows

and the curtains i've learned all about that i've learned that new south Wales and Victoria basically

consider themselves each of them to be the true holders of true australianism and they can't be

both right at the same time i've found out that south australians have got this weird thing about

you know being the only freeborn state ever and then there's little old Tasmania which

mostly just comes in culture as a kind of crude way of describing an unshaven lady part

oh her map of tazie i didn't know what the hell that meant the first 30 times i'd seen it

i then looked at Tasmania and thought ah i think i now do understand

mm-hmm it's cold it's strange i've been there i absolutely adore it it has an insane museum

that i'm sure you're all very familiar with but when i went there my eyes were opened the machine

that makes poo the wall of your nostrils were opened the whole thing um it's great but one thing

that's very very clear about Tasmania is that everybody in australia basically goes oh Tasmania is

the new zealand of australia if new zealand didn't exist new zealand does exist so basically both

new zealand and tazmania are the new zealand and tazmania of australia and after a research

with further research i discovered also that tazmania were not allowed to play cricket properly

until jack simmons came along and transformed the side of the 70s i was aware of flat jack

that jack and his tremendous efforts in turning tazmania into a very serviceable one-day team initially

to the point when they were performing so well that the clamor for them to play shield cricket

presumably coming only from tazmania while the other states were off i could gods say that we

have to they let him in mm-hmm but this is like this may sound very naive and i realized that

the bulk of our listenership here are australian but just take it from me from an outsider's

perspective saying okay you can join the league but you can only play half the games

it's absolutely the most insane compromise i've ever come across and it doesn't seem to involve

that the end of it working out what the table was there had to be some odd calculation

that had to be worked out on the basis that you like times it by five and divided by nine

well travel wasn't so easy back then Daniel you couldn't just hop on the jet star from Avalon

for 45 minutes and pop over to tazmania back in those days you probably had to get a train

and then a ship and then another train and taz he's always held this wheel play even all the way back

i mean we were talking about this on the show a few weeks ago where the first recorded

first class match in australia is between victoria and tazmania but there is an argument that

that status should be rescinded that it should be stripped of this status because the tazmania

team worked good enough to make it a viable first class fixture bill ponsford's quadruple hundred

archie mcclaren argues that it should be struck off the register of first class innings because

it's it's broken mcclaren's record for the highest first class innings at the time and

clarence argument is that tazmania aren't good enough to be considered a first class team

so back you know we're going back to the 1850s in the first case we're going back to the 1920s

in the second case where tazmania is always on the periphery it's held on the outer teams play

tazmania here and there but those matches aren't part of the shield and then eventually they

are part of the shield but as you say they're played in an ad hoc partial basis with some mathematical

fucking around to try to make it fit it took a long long time for tazmania to be a genuine

regular full you know treated with the same regard as everybody else member of the cricketing

fraternity and to this day they would still argue that they're not given the respect that other

state associations are well I get that feeling and they certainly should be I mean that they might

to hobart hurricanes on my team in the big bash I'll have you know I mean we don't need to go

through a list of all of the great alumni but I just put out there ricky ponting I mean for heaven's

sake the fact that they pronounce law and system and this is all great the superb wine that incredible

fish bar on the harbor at Hobart where you get an oyster in a bloody Mary shot I mean that is

one of the greatest advances in culinary culture I have ever come across I will go into bat

for tazmania every day of the week I love it it's possibly Hobart my third favorite city in

Australia again don't at me but this is a tale of drought breaking and ultimately the drought

the crucial drought the sheffield shield drought which at the time was known as the poor a cup

is it still called that pure just yes pure is it just not the sheffield shield is it

it was sponsored it was sponsored briefly by a milk company called pure milk we have the milk

cup back in the 80s when when when Britain was just on the very coming out of its socialist

experiment which was a very fine experiment the the league cup which is the lesser cup competition

the FA Cup was sponsored by a whole host of things and one of them was just milk at one point

not a brand of milk just milk just drink it just good yeah the milk marketing board I mean

my god those were different days so I love that I love that I've one of the I've definitely

spoken about this on the show before but a a key part of my childhood slash adolescence was a big

billboard at Elton's train station that had the basketball andrew gaze on it spinning a glass

of water on the tip of his index finger as though it were a basketball as if to say

remember andrew gaze he plays basketball and the slogan on the billboard was drink more water

that's it that's it

close to the kind of PSAs that we had in those days wholesome health focused big water was not

involved they just want to people to be hydrated that's absolutely beautiful it is it is up there

with a marketing campaign in England which is called go to work on an egg which when I was when

I was nine years old was so confusing because I'm a very neutral man and I do not understand how

you would do that do you can't do that it's not safe you can't do that but let's get back to

the story the story of Tasmania a place that I'm very very fond of when I had the only shard

now I've ever enjoyed drinking so it's the season two thousand next next time you go there we're

going to go to cesu winery s is you you should look them up friends of the show they they they

sent me a chardonnay that I've seen as you I died I don't know anything about wine but I know

I don't like drinking chardonnay and this one was it was buttery it was rich it was mellow it was

superb anyway I didn't let you gag after it I know no look any any island nation that can produce

a chardonnay that I can drink is frankly worthy of great noves to accolade but the accolades they

hadn't got was to be champions of Australia in the true purest form of the game yep so we have

fast forward they've had a few near misses thrice they've come third or second third or second

something like that so that they're knocking on the door they're hammering the door but will the

door be hammered down in two thousand six seven they make it through to the final and they

storm the citadel they played ten games they win six of them they're clearly top of the table by

a long long way there's a strange quotient thing on the table that I don't fully understand

it seems to be a four bonus point margin right it was like 1.017 to 1.01 or 1.08 it was kind of weird

again I did think it was an unnecessary complication I mean I think bonus points are fairly

daft but I could just about get a ball with it because you just add them up with the other points

but then there was a quotient but it doesn't matter I'll let it go forget the quotient

it has maybe had 38 points they were ten points clear of their opponent in the final who were

new south Wales so they had home advantage they got to play at Hobart presumably at Bell Rive

which is a great round and this is the moment this is the moment where destiny could arrive

and they are sporting some very very fine players one who is getting close to my heart

Michael Diva Nuto or Diva as we called him Sari I dare say they called him that all over

Australia they did he was a coach at Sari for a while and a fine man I bumped into him

during this year's ashes and we discussed why Sari didn't quite get over the line and agreed

that it was you know a near miss but there's every chance that they'll do it this year I digress

he opened the batting with and this did surprise me Tim Payne who was not keeping wicked

he was playing as a specialist opener didn't go well for him he was bold by Doug the

Rock Bollinger for a three-ball duck so it didn't start too well for them but Diva with 24

guy called Michael Dyson who I don't remember Travis Bert I do once was a man called George Bailey

George Bailey yes he was in this team too adding at number five it is a wonderful life for George

Bailey Daniel Marsh was the skipper after those early wickets had tumbled they were at one stage

94 for five it looked like they might have frozen on the biggest stage destiny was calling

but no who comes back to help them Sean Klingel effort oh yes one of the great names of cricket

keeper who's keeping instead of Tim Payne and then runs from down the order Luke Butterworth

who quite ranked he should be playing in the Lancashire leagues Damien Wright who sounds

properly Australian with a little bit of support from Adam Griffith get them up to 340 there's

five wickets for Doug the rug this is in 2007 so this is you know before he's a real staple in

the Australian side it's making his way through he's catching the eye of the selectors Matthew

Nicholson with a couple grand Lambert with three then New South Wales after a good start with

Phil Jake's Jack Spaking 82 Dominic Fawnley with 41 wickets tumble they tumble left right and

center I can't find a four for 21 anywhere though Luke Butterworth after his 60 odd in the first

andnings four for 33 with a ball he's proven to be I mean it's it's it's up there with Ian

both of them in the Jubilee test match can he continue the sucred all-time form could it be one

of the great moments of his life well they skiddle if you can skiddle really I'd say that it's a

bundle more than a skiddle when you're 230 all out there's a chandel bundled out for 230 but Sean

Klingel effort and Luke Butterworth again rescue Tasmania from 176 for six that are

partnered by 163 basically to seal the Sheffield Gild in that one partnership both making hundreds

Klingel efforts of 304 balls 147 of 304 or six fours that is probably coming in civilly why

does that we'll never mention him Luke Butterworth bit quicker 194 balls with 15 fours they make 460

they can't lose now and not only can they not lose they go on to win in emphatic fashion

genuinely skittling second things new South Wales for 149 Ben Hilfenhaus the bricklayer with four

for 22 Damien Wright five for 13 the chase was 571 runs they were bowled out for 149 so how many

do they lose by or how many four hundred year win by 21 421 there we go it was spot on

we thought it was pleasure error briefly when we added up the score that South Africa made to

break their duck in winning the World Test Championship they got 420 wasn't talking about that

was he hell he was taught as about the day that finally glory was brought to Hobart 421

well I'm hammy we got there in the end oh 421 veilot Luna start you a variable us

thank you handsome hammy J and glamorous Gary G for bringing us that story i've got one from

Matthew the pledge is three dollars and 51 cents and as it was in the first one Matthews just

told me what it is he just tweeted it out beautifully beautifully done my dad says

Matthew used to work with Wayne Phillips number 351 there we go pledge solved and he tell me some

great stories I know it was only one test but I was a kid and I liked the guy so the important thing

here is that there are two Wayne Phillips's yeah I was going to say because a Wayne Phillips I know

didn't play one test indeed indeed the Wayne Phillips is the Phillips index if you will long time

listers will know because this is something that caught our fascination early in the years of the show

there is Wayne B Phillips and Wayne N Phillips Wayne Bentley Phillips and Wayne Norman Phillips all

of the kinds of Wayne Philipsies that one can have the Bentley and you may I'm getting very

Australian on this because I'm using you as my cultural guide yes but Wayne Wayne is a that's a

very Australian name in my mind Wayne yes Brad all that kind of Keith yeah but Norman and Bentley

a very a very English James from the 1920s so yeah was it just a style that you call yourself

things like you know Brad Stanley something rather Shane Keith Warren yeah not always not always

I think I reckon Norman's pretty Australian from that era because there are a lot of

Norman you're not going about you know Norma Neil you know Norm was the central character of the

the life being it campaign the cartoon character of the fat bloke sitting on his couch was called

Norm because it was you know it was a joke about the norm the average the regular guy kind of thing

so there are lots of norms in that era of Ian's and Keith's and Trevor's and whatnot

there are lots of Wayne's there are not a lot of Bentley's but yeah the middle name is often

it's often an area for a lavish expression that a button down fin-lipped closed mouth to sort of

Australian approach to things a parsimonious approach a one that doesn't like extravagance will

not allow any extravagance with the first name that can't happen the first name you don't want to

you don't want people to think you're showing off you know so you can't do anything flash with

the first name the first name it's got to be straight down the line but the middle name is where

you can do something with a family connection you're Stephen Peter DeBrosmiths of this world

and maybe that's where the Wayne Bentley Phillips comes in maybe there's a Bentley family name

going back a while because I don't think he ever drove one and I doubt that he ever will when

we're talking about Wayne Bentley Phillips who is a great South Australian a passionate South

Australian flipper as he's generally known nothing sure Daniel when going to an Adelaide test then

that you will run into flipper Phillips somewhere outside a pub and he will chew your ear off he's

a great racon tour done a lot of miles on the after dinner circuit has a joke for every occasion

fascinating career turn on debut real Jamie Smith vibes in that he wasn't really a keeper for his

state wasn't even a keeper at club level when he was breaking through the ranks kept wicked in his

junior days and then as he got higher up the list they started trying to make him a keeper again and

got squeezed into the job for part of his time at Australia which probably didn't help him when

you know it was a tall yeah I mean it was at a time when all all keepers were tiny and compact like

yes yes yes marries little no marines little no yeah I mean a little wise and you know literally

stumpy little like naughty literally naughty little kind of wooden creatures like basically they

would come out of a round door in a hill you know and then they would dive down the legs I'd take

an appeal and then they would go back into the hole and have second breakfast that's

that's what wicked keepers you know this is why Gandalf rocked up to the shark because he was like

I need you've got a band of 11 block 11 or 12 blocks he's sending off on a trip you need a wicked

keeper you need someone to keep keep shit together and in both occasions both both

adventures from the different books though there was a group of around that size there was definitely

a squad Lord of the Rings is probably a 13 or something's probably a touring squad you know an early

early touring squad but they need a keeper and maybe a backup keeper as well in the case of the

second story nonetheless this isn't about Wayne Bentley Phillips this is not about flipper because

as you say one test match he didn't play one test he played 27 I think Wayne Norman Phillips Wayne

played the one test he's the player that makes Alan Border crack the shits drastically

because Jeff Marsh is dropped for the Perth test and Wayne Norman Phillips is picked for Perth

this is the story at the end of the Adelaide test I think it is where they find out before the

last day of play that Jeff Marsh we dropped for the subsequent match Alan Border cracks the shits

spends a chunk of the first session off the field so Jeff Marsh is captaining on the field

Alan Boers off the field on the phone yelling at Laurie Sol the chair selectors

phone for a period of time that reporting varies on somewhere between 20 and 45 minutes that he's

wow that he's that he's paint stripping yeah during during the match so they they were told

just before play really so yeah just the word comes through just before they're due to go

under the field and Alan Border says fuck this where's Laurie get him on the phone and says you

you know they're gonna win they're playing against India they're they're it's a foregone conclusion

anyway he's like I'm staying in the dressing room yelling at the chairman of selectors down the

phone and then he's so in sense that he refuses to travel to Perth the rest of the team goes to

Perth the next test and Border stays in Adelaide for another couple of days sulking and eventually

travels over the later I love that I love these like as I've said before on the show that you

put these stories next to the fact of having met Alan Border as a relatively elderly very nice

and gentle and quiet man it's very hard to put these things together I couldn't agree with your

mall yeah yeah so so this is basically this sucks for Wayne Norman Phillips because he goes to Perth

Alan Border doesn't want him the team doesn't want him and chef marshes from Perth so the crowd

doesn't want him eat oh god and he's got to go out there and open the batting while everybody in

the state hates the fact that he's there opening the batting unsurprisingly doesn't make many runs

and never plays again so he gets dicked basically Wayne and Phillips got the rough end of the pineapple

that's also the test match where Satchin makes that 100 as a 19 year old so you know a good test match

to be in watching Tendil could weave that magic off that cracking pitch the way he's smacking the

ball through the offside it's also the move that gets Mark Taylor into vice captain's either for

the first time because chef marsh is not there he's the vice captain so even though Taylor's very

young in his career they make him vice captain for that match and that sets in train the fact that

he'll be the leader of that team later on so right it's it's it's a turning point so it's kind of

it's an important flex point for Wayne Norman Phillips to be there but it doesn't do him any good

in terms of having a career in terms of his career he's Victorian he's shortened punchy he's good

against the quick stuff exactly a hundred first class dismissals as a as a as a batter so it's very

easy to work out his average I always appreciate that when a when a player's been dismissed a hundred

times so 38.59 is easy to work out played for South Melbourne which was Laurie Nash's club starts

getting into the Victorian orbit in the 80s now Wayne Bentley Phillips makes a turn on test debut

Wayne Norman Phillips makes a turn on state debut for the VIX this is an impressive one though

West Indies are touring 88 it must be Patrick Patterson Ian Bishop Winston Benjamin that's

who you're going up against batting it for on debut as well as the spinners I think Roger Harp is

there fairly fairly unpleasant trio of quicks to be going up against and he makes 111 in his first hit

for his state doesn't make another turn that season does make a few 50s likes the touring teams

the Sri Lankans tour the next year makes his second first class under it against them first shield

turn against South Australia a little later in March 1991 a couple of weeks later plays a final

shield his only shield final against new South Wales the VIX winner and Wayne Norman Phillips makes 91

not out in the chase to win that game another big turn against South Australia at the end of that

year late 1991 and that's part of the the runner form that gets him in for that test match and he's

not the turn after that test match makes a hundred soon after against Queensland makes a double

against the South Wales early the next season carries on until the end of the season in 1994

and then carries on beyond that playing for South Melbourne for a great period of time

played for Greenmount in the UK where Mark Taylor played that club and Matthew Hayden played there

and he had had a season there too but he's always overshadowed and I talked about the difficulty

of researching things researching researching things he's overshadowed as a player by the Jeff

Marsh thing and by being viewed as a stand-in and an untitled one in that side and he's also

you set by the name thing because you can't find anything about him without Wayne Buck and Bentley

Phillips sticking his beak in and going are you talking about me because he's got such a big footprint

as a speaker and as being interviewed and all the rest of it try to find anything about poor old

Norman and all you get is Bentley parking in his spot so Wayne Norman Phillips if you're out there

drop me a line I think the best thing to do is just speak to you directly and then ask the questions

that I want to ask because there's no other way to find it with Flipper hogging all of the limelight

which you know seems seems appropriate for the personalities I suppose but that's what I can tell

you Matthew with your 351 about Wayne Norman Phillips and his one test so what happened to

his one test day one Australia smashed him India did okay in the first inning session made the

hundred which kept them vaguely in touch and then about normal and no he didn't he didn't make any

no he was opening the batting and a couple of low scores not not a good didn't didn't make a pair

but he made like a single figures and a 15 or something I don't have in front of me but it wasn't enough

to me it's has been like the Alan the Alan butcher of Australian who were famously played one

test match in 1979 and he was unlucky enough to back too long he got 1421 so slowly

and so I'm courageously that they never picked him again but how do you know it won

like Hutton on his debut you might have had another chance and smashed it yep anyway yep oh

normal I'm sorry about it for the break you know I'm we love him Nord VPN the Lord's VPNs

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it's the final word it's story time one more number to come on the show and our pleasure is

Steve Smith not that Steve Smith not that Tim mentioned the other Steve Smith one of the many other

Steve Smiths there are they are manifold two of them have played test cricket for Australia

indeed and this is not either of them I do not believe I believe this is the Steve Smith who is

known to the show for his own sports journalism work on basketball more so our Steve Smith this

Steve Smith has sent through three dollars seventy four and there is a small play a small clue

rather which says for an under appreciated idle from my youth not without controversy and detractors

to see his footwork and batting style was a welcome inspiration in a tough era for Aussie cricket

Daniel well there are many tough errors in Aussie cricket that when they are they barely count as

eras to be honest with you know the old couple of years here are two or three years here two or

three years and actually this era was I guess tough because of Kerry Packer but in so doing it

kind of heralded a whole new world for Australian cricket so it was it was a tough era for everybody's

cricket because there was one team that stood out ahead of everybody else the West Indies they

dwarfed all other countries with a possible exception of Pakistan I mean there's an interesting

conversation to be had about whether Pakistan were you know certainly the second best team in the

world around that time and on occasion could go toe-to-toe with the great West Indians but from 1976

to 1991 they didn't lose a series did they they were absolutely outstanding side it is that

era that we're talking about and we know this because of the clue the clue is very helpful just a

you know for all of you pledges who are thinking about clues that's a lovely clue by the way it's

layered it's got stuff in it that gets you somewhere it's not just any old drought because there

been a lot of droughts in cricket this takes us into the right general area and there is a man

who famously has an average of 37.4 who fits the bill completely for this clue and it is

Christian Rines golden boy it is Kim Hughes and so much has been said about Kim Hughes on

story time before that I thought how am I really going to inject editing new to this and it's

really it's going to be my appreciation of Kim Hughes because of the pleasure because I think

about Kim Hughes I think about Kim Hughes roughly seven or eight times a year

yeah largely because it's often brought up by people I mean his most famous incident is

outrageously him crying upon relinquishing the captaincy back in 1984 the West Indians have done

for him I mean you know Graham Smith made a whole I think three England captains cry but for some

reason we don't fixate on that we don't fixate on what happened to NASA Hussein and to Michael

Vaughan and this that the other but one Australian crying well there been two now with Steve Smith

to yeah yeah and Steve Smith but the other one got to do a bunch of stuff after the crying

is is the case he did crying wasn't the last thing that he did no that's very that's very very true

but you know our pleasure is Steve Smith and we are in crying territory oh yeah because the man

is one of one of our two Australian weepers and crying in Australian culture for a man

I'm sure in the wider Australian culture is perfectly acceptable they're quite a sophisticated

nation these days but in sporting culture that really isn't acceptable we love crying

in 80s sportic culture certainly yeah well certainly 80s but I mean even even when Steve Smith

cried he got some fairly bad raps as well I think it's a thing that some places are more comfortable

that in England now we've reached a point where nobody would nobody would mind nobody would mind a

winner crying nobody would mind there it would depend if you yeah if you're crying with joy holding

the premiership cup that's fine if you're crying you know I mean people love sports media loves

a schmalt story where it's where they can they can ring the emotional stuff where you know

player makes a hundred after a family tragedy or something like that and then they then

then so you know there are times when it's okay but I suppose in that instance you know it's

it's like oh well you've you've been bad you've been losing and now you're crying or you've

been caught doing the wrong thing and now you're crying about it so now we're going to get even

more angry about the fact that you're upset about the fact that something's gone wrong which is

a form of you know it's a form of bullying it's a form of bullying it's it's it's it's in

Saturday I'm it's it is and it's very unpleasant to watch but what I'm going to try to do is give

you my impressions from the other side of the world of what Kim Hughes was and what he meant

to us over here say us me I suppose because he's kind of right in my sweet spot of childhood

he goes out to England in 1977 which is the first ashes series that I properly remember

our eight years old at the time followed it completely it's a famous one with Boycott and Randall

and both of them making his test debut and picking up five for a Trent Bridge and all that kind of

thing and then Australian side that's being under tumult really because what's going on in the

background with the packer stuff schisms taking place incredibly brilliant tricketers being massively

underpaid to do a highly skillful and difficult job of facing West Indian fast bowlers for example

and also being able to watch and it's hard really to truly to appreciate this from the distance

of 2026 but in England cricketers were being really well paid actually by comparison with other

cricketers around the world it was a sort of IPL of its time county cricket at eight 17 counties

at the time each having at least two overseas professionals 34 guys from around the world getting

paid properly wall to wall TV coverage of it not very good TV coverage with one fixed camera at

the other end as I've reminded myself today when watching reams and reams of Kim Hughes batting

or it is Kim Hughes that we are talking about the lacrimos Australian captain and I had heard of him

before he came which is quite rare for an eight year old to know about Kim Hughes there was a

buzz about Kim Hughes and he came as part of a kind of package with David Hooks who also came on

that tour there was this sense that there were these two young guns flamboyant young guns

Australian batting had been not exactly grindy but quite staccano bite before that the likes

of kind of red path and Simpson and Laurie and cricket had been staccano bite really had

nearly 60s and early 70s Greg chapel was slightly different more fluent more delightful to watch but

if you actually look at the in chapel's numbers and the speed at which he batted he was a really

pragmatic player and there was this notion that there were these two young blonde vibrant

exciting Australian dashes who are going to come and tear things up

and I suppose from an English perspective the fact that it coincided with the kind of a rival of

both of them both of them cast his massive shadow over cricket at that point so if you were going

to be flamboyant you had to you had to be up there with both of them because both of us suddenly

whack in the ball out the park hitting sixes and taking wickets and being flamboyant and charismatic

and exciting but Kim Hughes got basically no chance at all on that tour there was for the final

test and the final test only he would basically throw it under the bus there was how it was described

one teammate and then as I was digging deeper into you know what happens to him at this point he

doesn't go with World Series cricket there's a dispute over whether he was ever asked he claims

that he was turned it down somebody else claims that he was never asked and he didn't turn it

down so he ends up in this depleted Australian side and so I think that I feel a bit for Hughes

here in that he began his career when people invest so much time in you know the golden boy as

Christian Ryan Fjolson that if you come into a side that's really struggling because they were

more than decimated as we know I mean 13 players of the 17 that were on the 1977 tour were signed

up by World Series cricket so he's playing the side of the likes of you know not bad players

two e-grey and yellup Bobby Simpson coming back but way too old in his 40s a young Rodney Hogg

yeah a quick Alan Hurst but you know when an Australian team gets beaten 5-1 by England there's

a reason for that and it's because it's basically their second stroke third eleven and Kim Hughes is

playing in that environment with a very young Alan border there are some very fine cricketers in

that team and Jeff Dimock and the like but at that stage they weren't a proper team and so he never

really got the chance to like say Michael Clark did coming at number six and number five into a good

side and people go oh my god he's good as well isn't he there was a lot required of him because he

was probably the most talented batter in that side notwithstanding that Alan Borden was going to go

and have a great career but just in terms of flamboyance and expectation and what it was going to be

and it felt like he didn't fulfill it and yet what he does do is have these incredible moments

and I spent a very glorious hour and a half this afternoon because YouTube is good at this isn't it

at finding some of his wonderful moments and I wasn't in Australia when he got his boxing day

100 against West Indies a West Indie side that had you might argue the most terrifying four that

they could put out up any one moment yep I mean you would argue that Malcom martial would have

to comprise the best four but if you actually look at the four fastballers the West Indies got

out because of injury in this time the other Ghana craft holding and Roberts in 1982 so time

is about as petrifying as you're going to get yeah and actually rewatching it on YouTube

and seeing the horrible leap of craft as he goes wider the crease and seeing the enormity of Ghana

and I've listened grace of holding and as I saw someone describe and he robert's the nearest

thing that the West Indie and Bola got to Dennis Lilly and seeing that 100 yep watching it

on that boxing day 100 it's a great innings but a couple of things that I hadn't thought of when

I thought about Kim Hughes in my mind he's got a very strong bottom-handed grip and I'd always

in my mind seeing him as a free flowing kind of like elegant David right handy David Gawa

right it's just because of the hair isn't it you just thinking of the hair and you think it's Gawa

partly that but partly you know I sort of in my mind's eye the quintessential Kim Hughes shot

was a sort of almost inside-out cover drive through extra cover and then when you look at his grip

he has this very ever so slightly tiny little tick as he's pleased back down you know how Jamie

Spiff does Jamie Spiff has this weird thing when he goes down down down and then pushes the back sort

of towards the ground and then a slightly weird angle I've now watched so many balls that Kim

Hughes faced and I can confidently say that he's got a similar kind of weird tick that his bottom

hand though which is so predominantly looks to move the ball into the on side is perfectly capable

of switching itself almost like he changes grip as he chooses to play a different shot to go

through the offside and the power of some of his shots on the outfields that you're looking at

in Australia in like the late 70s early 80s they are enormous they're big enough now in those days

it took a week to get the ball back from the boundary unbelievable let me run seven the rasping

square cut the kind of confidence with which he marches out to back against the West Indies with

collar turned up it's it's kind of I see now that in England we did not see the best of Kim

Hughes because what really from an English perspective you get from Kim Hughes is he didn't make it

in 77 because he played just the one test match he was then captain in 81 where

lucky he has some decent performances with the bat but he'll only really be remembered from an

English perspective in that series as the captain of the side that got both them and the other way

winning positions and so there was a sense that he was perhaps kind of like not tough enough

then you've got this kind of there's the centenary bit test bit of there is that in 80 as well

where he's betting it lost across across the test well I watch that back and two five knocks

100 in the first and he's a quick file 85 in the second to set up a very late declaration on the

last day in a game that's ruined by rain played in the wrong location into that it should have

a bit of the oval if you're going to celebrate the start of test cricket in England and a game

that was so incredibly disappointing because so much time was lost to rain that it almost gets

kind of lost as a match in English consciousness so in a way you kind of if you're English you kind

of don't really have a memory of Hughes that's particularly positive because then he doesn't

even get selected for 85 so he said he got the one full ashes tour yeah that was one that was

kind of calamitous and yet when you delve and you meander into the weeds of YouTube and watch

what a player he was I guess the final thing I want to say about this is that and this is where

I need to ask you because hopefully as my Australian correspondent you can explain what seems to be a

kind of I don't know is it paradoxical or is it just contradictory that there are there seem to be

a couple of guys out there Chappellei is one of them who is forever on his case and yet

when Hughes gets that 100 against the West Indies and indeed when he gets a double 100 later on

Chappellei can be perfectly you know splendid and a great innings fantastic you know this is

exactly what I want to see more of from Kim Hughes but he appears to be his fiercest critic and I

can't work out whether that is the tough love of someone saying look you're so good you should be

scoring loads of loads of runs or whether this is some kind of slight objection because Kim Hughes

always comes across as bouncy affable perhaps a bit naive might be part of the hair it might be

whatever but character wise which is very different obviously from the granite like

implacability of the chapel are you able to sort of explain that dynamic I think that it's

fundamentally that there was there was personal animus for whatever reason between that key group

of Lily Marsh Chappelle probably both the Chapples which doesn't seem entirely fair given that

Greg Chappelle and and Kim Hughes are swapping the captency back and forth various stages

depending when Greg Chappelle decides to make himself available or not that's really

loving that isn't it I mean it's really really difficult again for Kim Hughes it feels like every

single time he's dealt with shit hand yes yes and and there's a you know I think it's the maybe

it's to do with schedule packing and all the rest of it but it's it's the least impressive part

from me of Greg Chappelle's career is that there's at a stage when the Australian teams relatively weak

and they desperately need him as their best player he knows that and so he's able to

command an undue amount of influence at that period of time compared to other players at almost any

other point in Australian cricket where yeah so Steve Smith was a bit like this in 20 years sort

of 15 16 17 where he was so far and away their best player and they didn't have much else in

in the batting that he was able to basically make all the decisions around the team Greg Chappelle

was able to pick and choose and say I'll be available for this tour and not this one or I'll play

the home summer and they're not go overseas fine to prioritize mental health if you was worried

about burning out and so on but to have the expectation that I'll come back and captain when

I'm playing as opposed to you know I'll have to earn my spot back if I want to sit out this tour

there was something wrong there but for whatever reason maybe it was a Western Australian thing

initially between Kim Hughes and Rod Marsh and Lily to begin with and then

that Chappelle's got drawn into that there was there was personal beef I think Chappelle is a

well enough able as an observer of the game to watch a great innings and say it's great innings

even if he doesn't like the guy but he still didn't like the guy for for whatever reason that was

and I think there's also a misunderstanding of him Hughes as being sort of gentle and

fey because he has the golden curls and because he cries in the press conference and for nothing

more than that people go oh Kim Hughes was a gentle soul who was too sweet and good for this world

and and and with his willow he risks and all the rest of it and like you say he didn't play like

that he was tough as old boots for a lot of the career that he had and he's not someone who's

personality is progressive and and open-minded and gentle he's someone who's personality as in

in whatever experience I've had with it as with with him as an older guy is pretty brusken pretty

much straight down the Australian male traditional conservative mold that you would expect

that he he says some unpleasant stuff and he doesn't necessarily have a hugely open-minded

approach to the world in the way that you would expect of a man of his age right he's not he's

not more like he's not only to get us out of that really captain the two Australian rebel teams

in South Africa exactly then finished his career in the tall while they were still under a band

so yeah yes it's a very complicated kind of thing I'm trying to get my hand well that's the

thing this isn't an enlightened person who's saying I'm going to keep going to a part-eyed South

Africa even after I've had it very well it clearly explained to me what's going on with and why

people are not doing that and and why there's an appropriate man so I think there was a degree of

stubbornness to say well fuck you don't tell me what to do I'll keep going that would be my guess

so you know there's all of that I think you know Kim Hughes is is seen in a way that it doesn't

actually reflect who he is and he was also treated unfairly by this clique within the Australian team

that for whatever reason that I said against him and thus made his life more difficult than it

needed to be and stopped Australian cricket from getting the best out of him when he might have

been able to offer more I think all of those things are true at the same time but these are just

observations from well outside the ring of what was actually going on so there you go and that

that's the the I've tried to explain the Kim Hughes as we understand it from over here an

average of 37.4 which looking at the highlights of some of his best knocks does not reflect

brilliantly on him but the caveat to that would be did play a lot of test matches against West

Indies and they were very very very good at the time yes and did play in a week Australian team for

most of his career you know so he didn't have the luxury as well yeah yeah exactly that that's

the big thing about that boxing day innings it's not just the ballers he's up against but the

the the wickets horrible as well so you know the the players who were quaking in their boots about

the Asher's pitch of 2025 should go and try to play on that one now what do you just take

this is here's something for our our listeners go on a YouTube and watch him charge Joe Garner and

smash him through Neeman wicket on that pitch with the top four all got out for four or fewer

it was quite the thing and it wasn't that it got a lot better because Dennis really then skittled

the top of the West Indies order at the end of the day so yeah it was it was quite the knock you

had it in him that's for sure yeah that is story time for this week number 264 thank you Daniel

Norcross for taking us through your tails in your inimitable way thank you to everybody who's

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Daniel you have a dinner date I have to eat or I'm going to fall over let us call this

the end this program I will see you another thank you for being with me this has been the final

word till next time bye

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