It’s a sight burned into the memory of every Australian cricket lover. As a batsman trudges back to the pavilion after being dismissed for nought, a little cartoon duck wearing a cap and leg pads appears from the left of the television screen.

He is the picture of righteous indignation, furious at the injustice of a world that has conspired against him. As he nears the middle of the screen, he stops, plants his bat on the ground like a battle standard and glares haughtily at the unseen umpire (also, presumably, a duck) behind him.

Suddenly, reality hits. His whole body sags with the realisation of what has happened. His imperious scowl turns to a grimace of despair. A series of sorrowful quacks escape his beak. In shame, he claps a hand over his eyes. As a final self-humiliation, he turns his cap backwards on his head. Like the human batsman above him, he turns and stumps off to oblivion, dragging his now-flaccid bat behind him.

For the first time in more than 40 years, Australian cricket isn’t on the Nine Network. While the infamously blokey and self-absorbed “banter” of Nine’s commentary team won’t be missed, Cricket Australia’s sensational decision in April to split domestic broadcast rights between Seven and Fox Sports meant a host of unofficial cricketing traditions have fallen by the wayside. Channel Nine’s iconic theme music has gone, as has the phrase “KFC Classic Catches”.

But Daddles the duck is one of the relics Australians will mourn the most. For decades, the snooty little cartoon drake harrumphed his way across TV screens, adding insult to injury for batsmen who’d failed to get any runs on the board.

Introduced as part of Kerry Packer’s drive to drag cricket broadcasting into the modern age in the 1970s, Daddles was designed to appeal to kids and get a younger generation interested in a sport suffering from an ageing fanbase.

Created by cartoonist Tom Kerr, he first appeared during Packer’s breakaway World Series Cricket tournament, along with day-night matches, on-screen graphics, dynamic new camera angles, white balls and colourful uniforms. Daddles would survive the collapse of WSC and migrated to Channel Nine cricket, where he would remain for decades.

For cricketing purists, Daddles was a loathsome creature; a sign of everything that was wrong with the brash, colourful reforms Packer introduced to the gentleman’s game. When Mark Sharman took over sports broadcasting at England’s Channel 4 in 1999, the first thing he declared was “There will be no cartoon ducks”. Kerr himself, who still gets mobbed by herds of Australians, has described the English hatred of Daddles as “reward in and of itself”.

Comedian and impersonator Danny McMaster was working at Channel Nine when he got the call to voice a cartoon duck. According to him, the rationale for having a duck on-screen was purely pun-based. (The term “duck” itself is believed to have originated in 1866, when a correspondent for England’s Daily Times newspaper reported that the Prince of Wales was dismissed “on a duck’s egg” – or zero – in a friendly game against the Gentlemen of Norfolk.)

McMaster remains bemused by the experience.

“They told me, ‘this duck’s going to walk across the screen with smoke coming out his ears’. I didn’t get it,” McMaster says. “I put a tentative thing down, just some angry duck noises, and they showed me an animation the next week.”

While McMaster would occasionally get called in to “update” the character, Daddles remained more or less the same for the rest of his broadcast career. “I only got paid the once,” he jokes. While Daddles captivated kids everywhere, the character would end up coming full circle in McMaster’s own house.

“My daughter had a little stuffed doll of a duck that her grandmother made her. She called it Daddles. I thought she named it after me, but she picked it up from the cricket,” McMaster laughs.

Attempts to capture Daddles’ charm elsewhere have resulted in some subpar imitations. Channel Ten’s Big Bash League heralded the rise of Gus the Goose, a CGI abomination in a leather jacket and dark sunglasses who appears whenever someone hits a six.

In October, Fox Sports announced the creation of their own duck, an as-yet unnamed bird to be voice by Shane Warne. Ominously, Fox head of cricket Matt Weiss has described the new duck as being “cooler,” with “more attitude”.

Unforgivably, Daddles fell by the wayside before Nine lost the cricket. Speculation the two events are connected is ongoing. In 2016, a Change.org petition, addressed to Channel Nine, urged “whomever [is] responsible for the unjust termination of Daddles to reinstate his cameo immediately”.

It gathered a paltry 18 signatures.

But the original Daddles is still remembered, and mourned, by those who loved him.