There are some cricketers you just don’t mess with, according to Brad Haddin. One of them, as Dan Cullen once found out in a one-day international match in 2006, was the legendary cricketer Brian Lara.
Hadds recalled on the latest episode of Willow Talk with Adam Peacock and Bharat Sundaresan touring Malaysia as a prelude to the 2007 World Cup, and playing a couple of ODIs against the West Indies.
Before the matches, the team was warned not to get in Lara’s face.
“In the team meeting before playing the West Indies, they said whatever you do, do not say anything to Brian Lara…because if you do, you will ruin the game,” he explained.
“We can’t get him out and he’s good enough to beat us by himself.”
One of the fresher faces alongside Haddin, playing just his 16th match in the 50-over format, was a little blonde off spinner from Adelaide in Dan Cullen, who was playing his fifth.
So what did Cullen do when it was his turn to bowl, and Lara padded a delivery away?
Awoke the beast.
“Dan Cullen picked the ball up and shaped to throw it back at him, and then he said something. Lara looked back to me and I looked straight at my shoes.
“He basically said ‘you’re effed now’…”
And – as Hadds recalled – it turns out it was Cullen’s last one day international for Australia.
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