It’s no coincidence that Ian Chappell never lost a single Test series as Australian captain. Though he’d inherited a mess after Bill Lawry’s exit, his men lived and breathed the Gospel of Chappelli and he extracted every ounce of ability from them.
“The most important objective in my cricket life was to win the respect of the players in my team,” Chappell once said. According to one of his charges, John Benaud, players were “forever volunteering to walk on water for him”.
Playing under the adventurous Les Favell at South Australia in the early stages of his career formed a great deal of Chappell’s cricket philosophy. Elevated by Favell from the middle-order to No 3 (above Sobers), the young Chappell scored a double-century two games later. That willingness to give responsibility and backing to the player rubbed off on Chappell in his own leadership.
Chappell was having lunch in a cafe when the call came from a journalist that he would replace Lawry as national captain. Lawry himself was just as shocked, hearing the news on the radio. Out of the experience Chappell vowed that administrators would “never get me like that”.
Chappell was a lateral thinker when it came to tactics. In his first Test as captain he won the toss and elected to bowl, a call he had never before made as a first-class captain. Hours later England had been bowled out for 184 with spinners Terry Jenner and Kerry O’Keefe sharing six wickets.
Under Chappell, every player knew his role and none wanted to disappoint their captain. He was the first Australian to lead his country in 30 Tests, a period of continuity we would now take for granted, but it was time enough to shape a tough, era-defining side from which many of the sweat-soaked myths and legends of Australian cricket sprang. Robinson said Chappell’s success as captain was underpinned by his ability to keep the “psychological temperature of the dressing room at [a] tolerable level”.
Chappell believed in catering to the differences between individuals, and his primary interest in a player was whether he’d offer Chappell a century or five wickets. Camaraderie was vital and a key responsibility of the skipper.
“Kim Hughes made the comment that you can’t be one of the boys and be a good captain,” Chappell said recently, “which is the greatest load of codswallop I’ve ever heard in my life.”
In hindsight it’s clearer to see that Ian Chappell was born to Australian captaincy – his directness and will to win could certainly be seen as an apple not falling far from the tree. His grandfather Victor Richardson was a popular captain and lead Australia in five of his 19 Test matches, and his brother Greg followed him into the top job.
“He bred loyalty,” Jenner said. In one Shield game against Victoria, a sparse Adelaide crowd of about 200 began heckling Jenner as he bowled. Chappell told the bowler to leave the retorts to him.
“Ian started to call them wankers and returned their insults. They left me alone and went for him.” Soon enough, a refocused Jenner had four wickets to his name.
In 1975 it was Chappell himself that took the initiative to pass on the leadership to his brother, thus refusing to allow the board to beat him to it. On hearing news of the announcement, one unnamed administrator was quoted as saying, “I’m glad the bastard has gone. He’s a bloody rebel.”
“I’ve had enough … enough of the pressure and enough of the glory, too,” were Chappell’s parting words. But he was right, they hadn’t “got him”.
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