RevSportz Comment
“Ian left him [Greg Chappell] a legacy of a very good cricket team with a wonderful team spirit and a burning ambition to stay on top. He did more than that, however, for his players. Ian Chappell is and was very definitely a players’ man. He has had more brushes with officialdom than any other players since Keith Miller and Sidney Barnes just after the end of the war, and most of these brushes have been because of his unwillingness to compromise.
Nothing is a shade of grey to Chappell and, although his candid speech and honesty can be refreshing, the same attributes also have landed him in trouble with the administrators on several occasions…”
The late Richie Benaud wrote those words nearly half a century ago, after Ian Michael Chappell was named one of Wisden’s five Cricketers of the Year in 1976. That every single one of those sentences still holds true to this day is testament to the strength of Chappell’s character. As cricket grew richer, many were prepared to compromise on their principles for a few dollars more. Not Chappell. If he couldn’t speak his mind, he didn’t want to be there.
It was no surprise either that Chappell referenced Benaud in his final column for ESPNCricinfo, published on February 23. ‘In my playing days I asked former Australia captain Richie Benaud if retirement was a difficult decision. “No Ian,” Benaud replied wisely, “It’s easy. You’ll know the right time.”
Always astute, Benaud was correct. Retirement from journalism is similar to cricket – I knew the time was right.
I will miss filing a column, as writing has been a favoured task. A writing career spanning more than 50 years means I surpassed my journey both as a cricketer and a broadcaster.’
It’s almost a decade since Benaud passed away, and in more ways than one, Chappell was his heir. Strong advocates for positive cricket that entertained those watching, they were never nauseatingly parochial like so many are these days. The disgusting ‘we’ was never part of the vocabulary on air or in print. Proud Australian captains both, but as media personalities, they recognised that they were servants of the game as a whole, not propagandists for the baggy green.
Chappell’s stature as captain and pugnacious batsman was such that there were never any holy cows in his world. During Steve Waugh’s farewell series against India in 2003-04, Chappell was one of the few critical voices, with his acerbic comments questioning what he considered the ‘selfish’ nature of the extended departure.
By then, with Lalit Modi and others clamping down on dissenting voices against the BCCI, the invitations to India had also been drastically reduced. Like Michael Holding, another for whom principle trumped pots of money, the thought of being gagged was anathema to Chappell. If he was going to commentate on India games, he would damn well say what he thought of the administration. How they reacted to it wasn’t his problem.
Over the last two decades, that forthright approach saw him take a stand on non-cricket matters too. Whether it was the issue of refugees or the destruction of the coral reefs of Queensland, Chappell was never afraid to take a stand. You could also rest assured that he would have done his homework and analysed the problem threadbare.
Such fierce independence and professional pride are increasingly rare in a media landscape where big corporations expect everyone to follow their drumbeats, and more’s the pity. With each passing day, fewer and fewer probing questions are asked, and headlines have become inanities.
In a way, Chappell’s retirement is a reminder of journalism’s golden age, when the quartet in the commentary box – Benaud, Chappell, Tony Greig and Bill Lawry – were almost as well-known as West Indies’ four horsemen of the apocalypse – Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft. Their voices explained the game and made sense of it for more than a generation, and every brilliant broadcaster you see today – whether that’s Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain or Ian Bishop – has taken a leaf out of the Benaud-Chappell manual. Perhaps there’s no greater tribute.
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