War of CricketRichard Hadlee
For most of the 1980s, Sir Richard Hadlee did not just lead New Zealand's bowling attack — he largely was it. Playing for a side that otherwise struggled to take twenty wickets in a Test, Hadlee took 431 of them himself across 86 matches, a world record when he retired in 1990 and still, decades on, more than double the tally of New Zealand's next-best bowler, Tim Southee (391), who needed 128 more Tests to get within reach of it.
The first to 400, and briefly the world's best ever
Hadlee made his first-class debut for Canterbury in 1971–72 and his Test debut in 1973, both times hit for four off his very first delivery — an inauspicious start to a career defined by exactly the opposite. He was the first bowler in history to reach 400 Test wickets, dismissing Sanjay Manjrekar in a home Test against India in 1989–90 while old boys from his former school sang the school song from the stands, and he held the world record for most career Test wickets from 12 November 1988 — when he passed Ian Botham — until 8 February 1994, when Kapil Dev overtook him. He finished with 431 wickets at 22.29, still New Zealand's all-time record by a wide margin, and 3,124 runs at 27.16 with two centuries, one of only four players of his era (with Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Ian Botham) grouped together as the great all-rounders of the 1980s — and of the four, Hadlee had comfortably the best bowling average.
Building New Zealand's first wins
New Zealand had gone almost 50 years without beating England in a Test when Hadlee took 6 for 26 in England's second innings at Wellington in 1978, bowling the tourists out for 64 and delivering New Zealand's first-ever win over England. A breakthrough performance against India in 1976, when Hadlee took 11 wickets in a match, had already established him as the side's frontline strike bowler two years earlier. Across a 17-year career largely spent as the only genuine threat in a modest attack, he was the difference between New Zealand competing and New Zealand losing heavily — a burden very few bowlers in the game's history have carried for so long virtually alone.
| Format | Matches | Runs | Wickets | Bowling average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tests | 86 | 3,124 | 431 | 22.29 |
| ODIs | 115 | 1,751 | 158 | 21.56 |
Knighted while still playing
Hadlee was appointed MBE in 1980 and, in the 1990 Queen's Birthday Honours, knighted for services to cricket — announced just before the second Test of his final tour of England, making him only the second Test cricketer ever knighted while still an active player. He celebrated by scoring 86 in that Test's first innings and winning the match award, then ended his career in the final Test of the series by taking a wicket with the last ball he ever bowled. Wisden ranked him the second-greatest Test bowler of all time in a 2002 poll, and he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009. He went on to chair New Zealand's national selection panel, and in 2018 was diagnosed with bowel cancer; he underwent surgery and has since spoken publicly about the diagnosis to encourage early screening.
Legacy
New Zealand cricket before Hadlee had never produced a bowler capable of winning matches on his own; New Zealand cricket after him had a template for what one could look like. Son of Test captain Walter Hadlee and brother of two other New Zealand internationals, Richard remains the standard against which every New Zealand fast bowler since — Chris Cairns, Trent Boult, Tim Southee — has been measured, and the country's Test wicket record he set in 1990 has never come close to being threatened.