Dennis Lillee

Arguably the greatest fast bowler to have ever played the game, Dennis Lillee was the first bowler to take 350 Test wickets. Ask any batsman of his time and they will tell you facing Lillee and his partner Jeff Thompson bowling in tandem was a daunting task. He was extraordinarily fast and even on flat wickets was a batsman’s nightmare. One couldn’t drop their guard even for a moment when he was running in to bowl.

He began with aplomb taking eight wickets against a World XI that included the likes of Sir Garfield Sobers and Sunil Gavaskar in 1971. In the Ashes in 1972, he took 31 wickets at 17.67 to set the stage on fire. He though suffered from spinal stress fractures and it looked like his career was about to go downhill but the pacer not just managed to return but made a roaring comeback to the game.

Though Lillee reduced his run up post injury but he did not lose any of his prowess. The pace was obviously cut down, but he had become a wiser and a smarter bowler. He found an able and fiery partner in Jeff Thompson and both of them wreaked havoc. The duo became the most feared fast bowling combination for the opposing batsmen. With finances being the obvious issue, Lillee joined hands with Ian Chappell and couple of others to sign a contract with Kerry Packer and played World Series Cricket for a couple of years before a truce was reached between the warring parties.

One of the controversial moments of his cricketing life was an on-field scuffle with Javed Miandad in the Perth Test in 1981 where the Pakistani great threatened to hit him with the bat. Dennis till date claims that it was Miandad who instigated it. There was another incident involving him a few years earlier where he angered his skipper when he walked out to bat with an Aluminum bat. There were no rules for bats then but both captains were not happy with it and Lillee was forced to change his blade.

Injuries had the last laugh and the pacer was forced to retire in 1984 from all formats. After retirement, Dennis Lillee has been involved in many coaching activities, especially in the MRF pace academy in Chennai. He was also the head of Cricket in Western Australia for a long time.