Lawry receives Hall of Fame honour

Former Australian captain and beloved broadcaster Bill Lawry will become the 35th Australian men’s cricketer to be inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame when he is afforded the honour this week.

Lawry, 77, will join his former long-time Test opening partner Bob Simpson and a raft of contemporaries – including the man who controversially replaced him as national skipper, Ian Chappell – when he is recognised at Thursday night’s dinner fittingly held in his home city of Melbourne.

Largely through the unashamedly parochial broadcast persona he has presented since joining as a voice of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1978, Lawry has become synonymous with Melbourne and his passion for all things Victorian.

The cult following he has developed over the past 35 years is somewhat at odds with his reputation as a dependable if dour opening batsmen who played 67 Tests from 1961-71 in which he scored 5,234 runs at an average of 47.15 with a career high 210 against the West Indies in Barbados.

He also had the honour of captaining Australia in the historic first one-day international that was staged in lieu of the rain-ruined New Year’s Ashes Test at the MCG in January, 1971.

Such was Lawry’s legendary obduracy with the bat, renowned English journalist Ian Wooldridge famously described him once as “a corpse with pads”, though the cricketer’s Bible – Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack – was more diplomatic when naming him one of their cricketers of the year in 1962.

“Presenting a really straight bat, he combined a well-organised defence with a satisfying, if not very wide, range of strokes, showing readiness to hit the loose ball and extraordinary facility in placing it,” Wisden opined.

“Admirable composure and power of intense concentration supplemented these assets.

“He was stout hearted, stubborn or pugnacious as circumstances prescribed, and had the temperament of being able to carry on unruffled by error.”

Nicknamed ‘Phantom’ by his Victorian teammates because of his obsession with the comic strip adventures of the same name, Lawry achieved his place in cricket folklore when he became the first – and so far only – Australian Test captain to be sacked in the middle of a series.

That moment came after he had led Australia 25 times (for nine wins, eight losses and eight draws) and the then Australian Cricket Board deemed Ian Chappell a better option for the final match of the 1970-71 Ashes series that was won by England.

Further spice was added to that scenario when news of his axing was revealed to him by journalists rather than the national selectors who had decided his fate.

Not that Lawry has ever displayed any public bitterness over the circumstances under which his international career was terminated.

“I have no regrets, not one,” Lawry has said of his life in cricket which will be duly celebrated at the Hall of Fame dinner on Thursday night.