Former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell has recently recalled facing Brad Hogg in the nets. He stated that he did not have any difficulty at all playing the chinaman bowler and played him quite comfortably. He revealed how he was having a net session with Shane Warne after which he faced Brad Hogg.
Chappell said that he “wanted to face him, just to see what he was like”. Hogg arrived in the middle of a session and bowled to Chappell. However, after the session, Chappell found it hard to understand why so many cricketers failed to pick the left-arm leggie’s googly.
“He [Warne] had been bowling for a couple of minutes, and suddenly Brad Hogg appears from somewhere, I don’t know where he came from,” Chappell was quoted as saying on the podcast ‘Time to Talk’ with Sean Sennett.
“Brad Hogg was a piece of piss, even [when I was] at 52. I mean, why the hell people can’t pick his wrong’un is beyond me. You’re obviously not looking at the right place! I cover drove Hoggy a couple of times …” he added.
Since Warne was at the peak of his career at the time when Hogg was around, the chinaman bowler never really got to play for the national team. However, he still featured for the Australian team in as many as seven Tests, 123 ODIs and 15 T20Is and picked up 180 international wickets.
Given that Hogg was a respected bowler all around the world, Chappell’s comments are hard to digest for a section of the cricket fans.