Dennis Lillee
Australian cricketer (fast bowler) who played for Australia from 1971-1984
Dennis Keith Lillee, (born 18 July 1949) is a retired Australian cricketer rated as the "outstanding fast bowler of his generation". Lillee formed a new ball partnership with Jeff Thomson, which is recognised as one of the greatest bowling pairs of all time.
In the early part of his career Lillee was an extremely fast bowler, but a number of stress fractures in his back almost ended his career. Taking on a strict fitness regime, he fought his way back to full fitness, eventually returning to international cricket. By the time of his retirement from international cricket in 1984 he had become the world record holder for most Test wickets with 355, and had firmly established himself as one of the most recognisable and renowned Australian sportsmen of all time. He was a part of the Australian squad which finished as runners-up at the 1975 Cricket World Cup.
In a fan poll conducted by the CA in 2017, he was named in the country's best Ashes XI of the previous 40 years. On 17 December 2009, Lillee was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
He is the subject of the song "Water Lillee" on Lord Kitchener's 1976 album Home for Carnival.
Cricket career
Aged 20, Lillee made his first-class debut for Western Australia in 1969–70 and impressed with his raw pace.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1189313. VIAF identifies the subject as 70289128. The Library of Congress control number is n82213087. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949, 1984, 1975 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dennis Lillee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.