00:00If he could hit the ball out of the park, he'd take away the win from the Australians.
00:04But the shameful lengths the Aussie team were willing to go to would cause their own home
00:08crowd to relentlessly boo them off the field. A day later, New Zealand's Prime Minister would
00:13call it the most disgusting incident in the history of the game, and Australia's own Prime
00:18Minister would demand the team's captain apologise in order to salvage relations with the allied
00:23country. So what did the Australian team actually do? Well, imagine a baseball game where the
00:29pitcher just rolls the ball along the ground in the final inning just to make sure the batter can't
00:34possibly hit a game-winning home run. Of course, it couldn't happen in baseball. The rules wouldn't
00:38allow it. But in 1981, the rules did allow something like this to happen in cricket. Cricket's version
00:44of a pitch, which is thrown with a straight arm and called a ball, looks like this. And if a
00:49batter
00:49hits the ball past the boundary line of the field on the full, they're awarded six runs. So when
00:54Australia was six runs ahead of New Zealand in the final ball on a scorching hot 38 degree
01:00Australian summer day, the Aussie captain, Greg Chappell, saw an easy way to secure the win and
01:05guard against the, albeit unlikely, possibility that the ball would be hit for six. So Greg instructed
01:11his brother, Trevor, who was bowling, to roll the final ball underarm. Oddly enough, at the time,
01:17this was still technically a legal ball. Greg told the umpire what he was going to do,
01:21and the umpire rolled his eyes. The Aussie catcher, known as a wicket-keeper in cricket,
01:26begged Greg to reconsider, but he was ignored. Trevor Chappell rolled the ball along the ground,
01:31the New Zealand batter tapped it away, and then he threw his bat in disgust. The Australian team
01:36did win the game, but they were booed relentlessly by their own home crowd. And immediately after,
01:42the rules were changed to explicitly outlaw underarm bowling to prevent an incident like this
01:47from ever happening again.
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