Rodney was a late arrival to Test cricket at age 27. Born in Victoria he was overlooked by state selectors and moved to Adelaide to find an earlier path to Shield.
He was selected and within a year he was noticed by Alan Davidson who mentioned his name to National Selectors. Just before this Lillee and co had debarked to Packer's World Cricket.
So Hoggie was picked to play in the home series against the Poms and then take on the Pakistanis in the summer of 78-79.
The games purists were as shocked as the pom batters at the instant success Hogg had and ended up taking a 36 wicket haul in the series.
At the time he just came out of the blue and bowling medium fast and wicket to wicket with perfect line while adjusting his pace he rattled the stumps continually.
Lillee was a great champion, but Rodneys line was so good I anticipated the stumps to be broken every ball.
Suddenly from the stands the call of "Lillee-Lillee" was replaced by "Hoggy," our new blue-eyed hero
In discussing Rodney commentatorsgave their opinions: Lindwall said "I'm excited you can't fault his line and he gets wickets. Brearly was greatly impressed and was a big fan, while the World Series Aussies
only expressed sour grapes towards our new champ.
Rodney's make-up was sullen, moody even rebellious and he didn't show any liking to any of his captains.
Initially team-mates and commentators were astonished that hogg would only bowl short spells and then throw the ball back to his captain and add "I'm going off" giving no explanation why.
It was soon discovered he was an Asmatic and under a hot sun with the rigours of fast bowling he was quickly forced to leave the field leaving Yallop, his captain, the man with the longest arms in cricket,
furious. After being pressed for an explanation Hogg offered to take Yallop behind the grandstand to end the discussion.
Those wickets taken by Hogg in the series equalled the Austalian record at the time of Arthur Mailey who only needed 4Tests to gain his haul as opposed to 5 tests by Hogg.
But Brearly noted Hogg had taken 26 eight ball overs less than Mailey to acuire his wickets.
So its fact that although Rod bowled many really short spells, most probably to use his inhaler, he always returned in short time refreshed and continued his deadly bowling to demolish any batsman he faced.
I'll always consider Hoggy as one of the best ever, while noting when a Journo asked him "How would you like to be remembered?" And he reponded in only his style "I don't"
Replies
Yep, he always gave 110% every time he bowled. That's the attitude we need our Parra players to have.
Wouldn't that be great Longfin, a team of people with the same amount of skill desire and agression as the Legend.
Shall we ask him to give a talk to our team. Chuckle
Great blog. He was always matter of fact in interviews.