Dennis Lillee: the aluminium bat and the extraordinary adulation

PL reports from The Chappell Foundation 8th annual dinner at the SCG

Adam Spencer, Greg Chappell with the aluminium bat and Dennis Lillee

Watching Ronald Barassi brush past the expensive seats filled with important AFL types on his way to an economy seat at the back of a plane filled with people excitedly whispering about the greatness among them, someone remarked that the only person who doesn’t know who Ron Barassi is, is Ron Barassi.

The late AFL legend wasn’t oblivious to the impact he had on ordinary people, but did his best to dissuade them of any notion that he was separate. Every encounter I ever witnessed between him and the awe-struck public went the same, Ron would fix his focus on them, ask them about their lives, crack a self-deprecating joke or two and laugh heartily along with theirs.

Watching Dennis Lillee with 500+ awe-struck people at the 8^th annual Chappell Foundation fundraising dinner on Wednesday at the SCG reminded me of something similar.

The 75-year-old fast bowler is held in adoration by all Australian cricket fans, but leans into every encounter with them with an egalitarian spirit.

None are immune to the Lillee effect.

The moment he walks in, he is engaged in conversation with a man who is wearing a Bob Katter hat, who presses a small bottle of spirits into his palm. They laugh and chat like old mates, but presumably have never met. Later, another man comes up bearing a small bottle of spirits gifted to him by the great man. He is beaming. Someone else comes up who knows someone who knows someone who did something with the one, and he listens as if learning about a lost relative. I’m impatiently trying to get signatures on artworks by Fisher Classic’s Dan Toomey and French Cut’s Paul McGrath and just a couple of bottles of wine for the silent auction, if you wouldn’t mind.

A tip for anyone wanting to engage DK in conversation: he has an extraordinary passion for wine. Tells me he has 3000 bottles in his cellar. He put me into one that I have to hunt down, I remind him of the time he had me scouring Aldi for one that had caught his fancy. Five hours later, he comes up to remind me about the earlier recommendation.

If he stops for one conversation, he stops for a hundred in the half hour between getting him to sign things at the back of the room and then getting him to his seat at the front. He never signals to be saved, like Barassi, he always engages fully in the moment at hand. It’s a generosity of spirit you don’t expect among people with such fame, but perhaps that’s the thing here: Dennis Lillee is a hero to hundreds of thousands; he is famous for his heroic feats, but he has never embraced “celebrity”. Whatever that is. Bradman was determined to write back to whoever wrote and to sign whatever needed signing in the vain hope that it would go some way to derailing the deification imposed on him by the public. There’s something about Lillee’s manner that suggests he wishes to be among and not above. A sense he almost craves to be allowed back down from the throne we all put him on.