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| March 11, 2003 | Tuesday | Muharram 7, 1424 |
Aussies, New Zealand no neighbours of love
JOHANNESBURG, March 10: Australia and New Zealand renew their fierce rivalry on Tuesday with the fallout from one of the darkest moments in cricket still souring relations between the two neighbours.
In Melbourne in February 1981, Australian skipper Greg Chappell ordered younger brother Trevor to bowl underarm to New Zealand’s Brian McKechnie to prevent the Kiwis from hitting the six they needed off the last ball to tie a one-day game.
Fearing the big hit over the boundary, Greg told Trevor to bowl the now infamous grubber, which prompted the headline “Chappell, your underarm stinks” in a Kiwi newspaper.
The tactic was immediately banned by the ICC but not before a huge international outcry over what was seen as an insult to the spirit of the game.
There were calls for Chappell’s head and even New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon became involved in the trans-Tasman trading of accusations calling it ‘a most cowardly act.’
Over twenty years later, the verbal sparring goes on.
In recent matches between the two, Brett Lee has played a prominent role.
He was fined 8,250 dollars in the third Test in Perth in December 2001 for pointing Shane Bond to the dressing room after he had dismissed his pace rival. Lee was accused of using abusive language and making offensive gestures.
That three-match series was shared, but the Kiwis claimed they were robbed of victory on the final day in Perth when Steve Waugh and Jason Gillespie both edged the ball to Adam Parore but were given not out.
“The rub of the green goes your way some days -0 some days it doesn’t,” said a philosophical Fleming.
In the one-day series which followed, even Fleming found himself in trouble with the authorities when he was charged with dissent for claiming that Australia had more than the permitted three fielders outside the circle.
The Aussies haven’t forgiven New Zealand for denying them a place in their own tri-nations series that year — an emotion not helped by the fact that Fleming, one of the more astute international skippers, started employing tactics of almost Chappellian proportions.
In one match against the third team in the tournament, South Africa, his team slowed down the run-rate so that the Proteas could clinch an extra bonus point which would further damage Australia’s bid for a final place.
The media turned on them.
The New Zealand Herald said: “It might have been understandable, it might even have been worthwhile. But it certainly wasn’t cricket.”
Fleming won’t mind the criticism.
His team has won four of the teams’ last six meetings and two of their last three World Cup clashes — by 37 runs in Auckland in 1992 when Martin Crowe hit 100, and again in Cardiff in 1999 by five wickets when Roger Twose’s unbeaten 80 was the key to victory.—AFP
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