Hadlee's latest chapter

BY JONATHAN MILLMOW

Richard Hadlee is in Wellington, looking a million dollars and trying to boost sales for his 13th book.

Hadlee has been in hiding for a year, putting the finishing touches on Changing Pace his third biography, which took him eight years to complete.

He hasn't been to a cricket match over the past year apart from when he had to pick up an award. When he was chairman of the New Zealand selectors, sometimes he was the only one at a game.

Hadlee is in fine form. His shoulders are still the size of a woodchopper's, there is a hint of a limp in his gait from bowling 67,517 first-class deliveries but it is his deteriorating eyesight that worries him most.

"I can be 30,000 miles up in the air and still see a car driving on the road, and can't see a golf hole," he laments.

He plays two rounds a week at the Russley club in Christchurch, but his handicap has ballooned from 10 to 15.

"I need glasses. Putting, I'm missing them, I miss eight or nine like that," he says while motioning his arms outstretched.

Hadlee is 58, as sharp and as accurate as ever. He wants to know if I've read his book and what I think of it. We have a rapport. We had been team-mates once or twice, including a one-day international against England at The Oval in 1990 when the only thing I did right all day was place the ball in his broken hand as he walked back to his mark because lobbing it to him from mid-on vibrated pain.

The motivation for this book seems to be part-cathartic, part-explanation.

There are three emotional chapters which cover off his father Walter's death, his own heart problems and his marriage breakup, which at one stage reduced him to living in a single bed at his parents' home at the age of 44.

"Writing about those emotional experiences can be a healing thing and perhaps others can take some inspiration as well," he says.

"It is more than a cricket book. It reflects the old days, the end of my playing days, the life of dad, my knighthood, health problems and life as a selector for eight years."

Hadlee's second biography Rhythm and Swing sold 44,000 copies. In a congested market this one may not reach those figures, but as with one of his bowling spells it has some real quality and contains no rubbish.

He believes it has "some controversy" but in reality it is his opportunity to explain "the other side" of what he went through as a selector during some turbulent years.

"It's come from here," Hadlee says, pointing at his heart.

HADLEE was part of the panel that ruthlessly removed the test captaincy from Stephen Fleming after the 2007 World Cup.

He says Fleming hung himself through his own actions. "He went quiet and New Zealand Cricket told us he was going to the rebel league in India so we decided if that's the case he'll be banned.

"There was a holding period of not much happening. We knew he wanted to keep playing test cricket but it got to the stage when we had to make a call.

"He wanted a swansong as captain in England but it doesn't always work that way."

Then-New Zealand coach John Bracewell upset Hadlee and fellow selectors Glenn Turner and Dion Nash by later revealing he wanted to retain Fleming as test captain.

Hadlee won't divulge which way he voted. "Braces was keen for Stephen to continue but also understood the rationale of selectors, of which he was one. We thrashed it through and made a decision."

One senses we are crying over spilt milk.

Hadlee bowls one bouncer in our 30-minute interview. It is at the cricket boards around the world and the International Cricket Council for allowing the growth of Twenty20 to spiral out of control.

"The game has been devalued. We are in danger of the decision-makers betraying the game for all those people that have gone before them.

"I've never forgotten the words of Don Bradman, who said `we are all custodians of the game whether we are players, officials, administrators, and we are there to protect the history of the game'."

Hadlee was "disturbed" the New Zealand players got their wish to arrive late in England last year because they had Indian Premier League commitments.

For all that, he doesn't lay blame at the feet of the players for the damage being done to the fabric of the game.

"The players are the pawns they are right in the middle of it.

"We have to understand the position they are in. If I'm in their situation with dollars flashing ,of course I'm going to be tempted.

"But at the same time the players need to remember playing for their country has opened the door to other things.

"To me, Wisden is the bible of cricket and that determines what cricket is about and who you are and what you have been. If you have a batting test average of 50 and a bowling average in the early 20s, then you are rated.

"Would you rather be rated a Twenty20 player with a strike rate of 200? Does that tell you what sort of player you are?"

Hadlee was himself caught up in the Twenty20 web when linked to an American Premier League in October but it never got off the ground and he ran for the hills when the word "unsanctioned" was mentioned.

Hadlee's next interview awaits.

Time, gentlemen.

- © Fairfax NZ News