The series stood delicately balanced at 1–1. New Zealand had taken the first match, Australia the second. The third final of the Benson & Hedges World Series Cup was meant to decide momentum; instead, it interrogated the meaning of cricket itself.
Even before
the last ball, the afternoon had begun to curdle.
Greg
Chappell, Australia’s captain and fulcrum, had already been at the centre of
controversy. On 58, he drove high and flat into the Melbourne outfield. Martin
Snedden ran, dived, and claimed a catch that looked, and later proved, clean.
Richie Benaud, watching live, called it “one of the best catches I have ever
seen in my life.” Slow-motion replays reinforced the verdict. Snedden had
cupped the ball above the turf.
The umpires
disagreed.
In an era
before television evidence could intervene, the decision stood. Some believed
Chappell should have accepted Snedden’s word, invoking cricket’s old covenant
of honour., Chappell insisted he was uncertain and within his rights to wait.
He went on to score 90, before later walking when caught in a near-identical
fashion, having seen the ball clearly held.
Already,
the game had exposed a tension that would later snap: between what the law
allowed and what the game expected.
Arithmetic,
Exhaustion, and the Slippage of Control
Australia’s
management of the closing overs betrayed an unusual disarray. Dennis Lillee,
their premier bowler, completed his ten overs with the dismissal of John
Parker. Richie Benaud later accused Chappell of “getting his sums wrong” by not
reserving Lillee for the final over. Graeme Beard’s overs were similarly
miscounted after a mid-field conference involving Chappell, Lillee, Kim Hughes
and Rod Marsh failed to reconcile the arithmetic.
Trevor
Chappell was left with the last over. New Zealand required 15.
Bruce
Edgar, stranded at the non-striker’s end on 102 not out—an innings later called
“the most overlooked century of all time “could only watch.
Trevor’s
over was chaos in miniature: a boundary, Hadlee trapped lbw, two hurried
doubles, Ian Smith bowled attempting a desperate heave. Suddenly, improbably,
New Zealand needed six to tie. Seven to win was impossible. Six was not.
Under the
laws of the time, a tie meant a replay.
The match
was alive.
The
Delivery
Greg Chappell, exhausted, overstimulated, and fielding the residue of a punishing season, made a decision that would outlive everything else he achieved in the game.
He
instructed his brother to bowl underarm.
It was
legal. That, ultimately, would be its most damning defence.
Underarm
bowling existed in the laws like a fossil—permitted but obsolete, technically
alive but spiritually extinct. It was against the regulations of several
domestic one-day competitions, widely understood as unsporting, and never used
in any serious context.
The umpires
were informed. The batsmen were warned.
Trevor
Chappell rolled the ball along the pitch like a bowls wood.
Brian
McKechnie blocked it out, then flung his bat away in fury. Australia won by six
runs. The New Zealanders walked off not defeated, but affronted.
In the
confusion, Dennis Lillee remained fractionally outside the fielding circle.
Technically, the delivery should have been a no-ball. Had the umpires noticed,
the match would have been tied and replayed. They did not.
The law had
spoken. The game had not.
Immediate
Condemnation
Ian
Chappell, commentating, instinctively cried out: *“No, Greg, no, you can’t do
that.”*
Richie
Benaud called it “disgraceful… one of the worst things I have ever seen done on
a cricket field.”
The
reaction crossed borders and institutions. New Zealand Prime Minister Robert
Muldoon described it as “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the
history of cricket,” branding it “an act of true cowardice.” Australia’s Prime
Minister Malcolm Fraser called it “contrary to the traditions of the game.”
In the New
Zealand dressing room, silence curdled into rage. Mark Burgess smashed a teacup
against the wall. “Too angry for words,” recalled Warren Lees.
Cricket,
usually insulated from politics, had forced its way into parliament.
Context,
Not Excuse
Years
later, Greg Chappell offered an explanation, not absolution. He spoke of
exhaustion, of being mentally unfit to lead, of a season so relentless he had
asked to leave the field mid-innings. Rod Marsh confirmed it. Chappell had
spent overs on the boundary, overwhelmed by heat and pressure.
Chappell insisted the delivery was not about securing victory, Australia had already won, but about protest. A cry for attention against a system that, in his view, was grinding players down without listening.
If so, it
was the worst possible articulation.
Cricket has
always tolerated cunning. It has never forgiven contempt.
Afterlife
of a Moment
The
underarm incident changed the law. The ICC banned the delivery in one-day
cricket, declaring it “not within the spirit of the game.” Few law changes have
been so swift or so moral.
The memory
lingered longer.
Chappell
was booed relentlessly two days later, then scored a match-winning 87 to secure
the series. In New Zealand, bowls woods were rolled onto the field when he
batted. The incident entered folklore, parody, cinema, advertising, and comedy.
Glenn McGrath later mimed an underarm delivery in a Twenty20, prompting Billy
Bowden to theatrically flash a mock red card.
Brian
McKechnie bore no lasting grudge, though he wished the moment would fade.
Trevor Chappell, forever reduced to that one delivery, learned to laugh along.
Greg Chappell accepted the stain would never lift.
Why It
Still Matters
This was
not an act of cheating. That distinction is important and insufficient.
It was
worse.
It was an
assertion that legality was enough.
Cricket,
more than most games, has always rested on an unwritten compact: that the law
sets the boundary, but honour defines the field. The underarm delivery
shattered that balance. It revealed what happens when calculation replaces
conscience, when winning becomes detached from meaning.
The match
itself was forgettable. The moment was not.
On one
February afternoon in 1981, the law won, the game lost, and cricket learned,
painfully, that some victories cost more than defeat.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
