The day Kim bowled me over

Andrew Mathieson
BOB Merriman can still vividly remember the moment that nearly made him choke on his cereal and spill his orange juice.
This week a quarter of century passed since one of Australian cricket’s most turbulent times was etched into the annals of the game.
Bob, now 74 and Borouh of Queenscliffe mayor, still retains his sharp wit and ability to recall every intimate detail behind the scenes that stopped careers and changed the direction of cricket.
He tells the story on the fourth morning of the second test match against the mighty West Indies when Australian cricket captain Kim Hughes summoned Bob, the Australian team manager, to a private breakfast at a Brisbane hotel.
“He walked straight into my room and said ‘I’m resigning as captain’,” Bob recalls.
A straight-shooter, he had always been able to think quickly on his feet but before he could string together a sentence or utter a word in disbelief, a besieged Hughes interrupted.
“I don’t want any more advice, Bob,” Hughes told his close ally.
“I have got advice from Western Australia, I have got advice from you, but all I want is for you to arrange for me and you to meet with Greg Chappell.”
The final trigger was three days earlier when Greg Chappell’s brother, Ian, tried to embarrass Hughes in a live pre-match television interview for backing a 38-year-old leg spinner to make his test debut.
Bob remembers the incident left Hughes “furious” and pressure from teammates, former players and media had finally taken its toll.
The resignation letter was already in hand on the morning before play had ended.
Out of loyalty Bob handed out a few last words of advice, some of which would prove to be cruelly ignored hours later.
“Mate, your resignation is miles too long and you’ll struggle to get through that,” he warned Hughes.
Sitting at the press conference soon after another Australian loss, Merriman could already tell the outgoing skipper was having a tough time to swallow every one of those last words.
Hughes could only get to the point where he said he was proud to be the captain of Australia.
“I was sitting next to him and I could see he was starting to quiver,” Bob tells.
“I said ‘Go on’ but, rather than going on, he went back and repeated that line.
“I reckon if he had gone on he would have got away with it and finished the speech but he broke down completely.
“So I finished the speech for him but since then we are still good friends.
“Then he made four ducks after that and his game was gone.”
November 26, 1984, proved the toughest day in Bob’s 49 years in cricket administration, which started pushing papers around a desk in 1958 on Newtown and Chillwell’s cricket committee.
Five years later Bob was appointed Geelong Cricket Association president, a role he held until 1976.
Promotion through the ranks three years later led Bob to managing the hardest Australian tour of India, which included six arduous tests played in near-unbearable humidity at the wrong end of the season.
“We did one memorable train trip – it was in a train with no windows,” Bob remembers.
“Then we found out the Indian side was in the first-class carriage behind us.”
Early signs for the trip weren’t good when the Air India plane’s engines blew up after the team left Singapore before arriving to Pakistani liberation movement death threat, which almost ended the tour before it started.
Bob’s passion for the game started at North Geelong juniors, flourished at Geelong College and peaked at Melbourne Cricket Club.
But despite nearly three decades of involvement with Cricket Australia, including a stint as board chairman for four years, Bob considers the game still the same at the grassroots levels.
“Cricket people are the same throughout the world,” he smiles.
“Whether it be at Newtown Chilwell, whether it be at Little River, whether it be in the Punjab or in Lahore, cricket people are still cricket people.
“The one thing we do have is the common playing conditions and we have the common 22 yards.”