Richard Hadlee put brilliance above bravado in one of the greatest careers

These days, everything has to be arranged and everything has to be ranked, particularly in sport. This is not all bad – in different times, Justin Langer might never have taught us the importance of “elite professionalism, elite learning, elite mateship and elite humility” – but for that, there is a quid pro quo. Naturally, much of the blame for this moral slippage lies with the Indian Premier League, as a result of whose draft enemies become friends and post-match patter turns into performative cliché. Whatever happened to good, honest, old-fashioned aloofness?

Richard Hadlee – star of New Zealand-England series past – epitomised such virtue, solely consumed by hitting the red thing with the wooden thing and chucking the red thing at the wooden things. When an expert such as Gordon Greenidge proclaims your belligerence, you know you’re on to something.

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A fast-bowling all-rounder, Hadlee took a hat-trick on his debut first-class appearance in 1971, then made his bow for New Zealand in 1973; his first ball, a full toss, was duly hit for four. This was indicative: in that first period he often took wickets but was frequently expensive, so it was not until 1976 that he cemented his place in the national side. Two years later, he took 10 wickets in the match as New Zealand beat England for the first time and then, in 1980, he shortened his run-up to protect his fitness.

This development was not universally well-received: opening bowlers were meant to be scary, their screeching pace and snorting incandescence prompting batsmen to contemplate the flavour of their own teeth. But Hadlee was different. Striding where once he had steamed, he became very much less scary to become very much more scary, an arrow in human form whose every fibre focused on taking wickets. There were no threats, sledging or histrionics; rather, he calmly calculated what each batsman least wanted to face then forced them to face it repeatedly, the only thing more economical than his figures his disbursement of bonhomie. He revolutionised the game simply by being brilliant at playing it.

Hadlee’s stock ball was a leg-cutter – delivered from close to the stumps to land close to the stumps, on a length and on the seam – that usually did a bit and occasionally didn’t. Then, around that, he deployed various variations whose nuances only he could fathom, pinning batsmen on the crease before ejecting them from it. For that reason, his most obvious contemporary comparator is James Anderson – not because of how he approached the wicket but because of how he approached his craft, appraising opponents and adjusting to conditions, then picking grip, action and angle accordingly. This method worked particularly well on Hadlee’s home track in Christchurch – against England in 1984, Hadlee first made 99 off 81 balls, then took three wickets and five wickets as the visitors were dismissed for 82 and 93.

So good was Hadlee that even Steve Waugh – not usually one for lavishing praise or admitting fallibility – was forced into rhapsody after being bowled by a “perfect delivery” at Wellington in 1990. “It pitched middle then deviated past my technically correct forward defence,” Waugh wrote, “and took the top of off-stump, leaving me without an intact set of bails and a pose worthy of a bronze statue. It was one of very few times I felt utterly helpless to defend myself; quite simply, he was too good for me.”

Perhaps most phenomenal of Hadlee’s phenomenal list of phenomenal attributes was his phenomenal level of consistency in a team that relied upon him to phenomenal extent. Unlike most other greats, he could not usually rely on scoreboard pressure or pressure from the other end, nor could he relax in the knowledge that if he didn’t deliver, someone else probably would. It was incumbent upon him to take wickets and restrict runs, strike bowler and stock bowler in one.

Of course, the equanimity that facilitated this would have been impossible without a healthy dose of mania and obsession – Jeremy Coney, the international captain with whom Hadlee famously fell out, recalls him fretting over the consistency of his run-up time and relaxing only when he hit 5.2 seconds, as opposed to 5.4 seconds, 30 or 40 times in a row. Even the signature performance of Hadlee’s career – at Brisbane in 1985 – left him with regret. After taking 9 for 52 in Australia’s first innings, he then dismissed the last man by holding a spectacular running catch that gave Vaughan Brown his only Test wicket, in the process depriving himself of the 10-wicket haul he called “the ultimate ultimate”. Naturally, he assuaged the pain, first by making 54 and then by taking 6 for 71 as New Zealand won by an innings.

Similarly, when Hadlee got injured only one victim away from breaking Ian Botham’s record of 373 Test wickets, he inadvertently tormented himself by dreaming about how he would snare the final one. But he got there eventually and was then the first to reach 400 – of the 14 men to do so since, only Curtly Ambrose and Glenn McGrath have a better average than his 22.29, and they were Curtly Ambrose and Glenn McGrath with Curtly Ambrose and Glenn McGrath’s team-mates.

Hadlee’s 431st scalp came from his final ball in Test cricket and completed his 36th five-wicket haul – still easily the most of any pace bowler in history. Then, and only then, did he find time for fripperies such as socialising.

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