Chappelli and I
Schtick 'em up: Ian Chappell. CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES
In the wake of my clash with Ian Chappell on Channel Nine's
Sports Sunday last weekend – the ostensible issue was the former Australian captain describing Mark Taylor’s presence on the board of Cricket Australia as “window dressing" – many people have asked if there is a back story to our friction.
A little, I guess. Though he has never said so out loud, I am aware that Chappell was on to me early, picking me in one as a know-nothing loud-mouth dickhead who has no experience of cricket higher than the U14/Ds and yet presumes to pontificate on various aspects of it, and even disagree with him, who has played 75 Tests, captained his country through its most iconic period of success, scored fourteen Test centuries, and has 70 years of the game in his very bones.
I, in turn, idolised him as a child and, as an adult, have respected his lending his weight to progressive political causes like asylum seekers but confess to finding his whole menacing machismo thing, which is his
schtick, very tired and tiring.
As to major blues though, only one big one. Ten years ago coming off a flight at Tullamarine I saw Chappell up ahead with Mark Taylor, both men walking slowly to keep pace with the man in the middle, the very elderly Richie Benaud, in his last years of broadcasting.
“Hello, Mr Benaud!” I burbled as I passed. He greeted me with a gracious nod of the head.
“Hello, Mark!”
“Gidday, Peter.”
“Hello, Ian!”
“%^&*I^&! f---king disgraceful journalism %^&*I^&!”
The issue, as I recall, was Chappell taking severe exception to some recent articles I had done criticising his dear friend Shane Warne over whatever Warne’s latest atrocities of the time were. I gave it back in kind, down the escalators and all the way to the luggage carousel, where we finally spun off in opposite directions. All of that seemed bygones that were bygone when we both gave brief eulogies at the memorial service for Mike Gibson at North Sydney Oval and he was quite civil.
But, lately? Not so much!
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/and-you-thought-america-was-going-to-the-dogs-20181109-p50f3f.html
