HE ranks among Australia’s greatest batsmen and most respected captains but thanks to his brutally honest opinions, Ian Chappell is far from universally loved.
Over his five-decade career as a player and a commentator, Chappell has never been afraid of sharing his thoughts and along the way, he has ruffled more than a few feathers.
In Jeremy Wilshire’s Test of Character: Confessions of Cricket Legends, old wounds are reopened, with Chappell withering in his assessments of the likes of Steve Waugh, Don Bradman and Ian Botham.
CHAPPELL v STEVE WAUGH
Few cricketers command more respect globally than Waugh.
As a captain, he led Australia to 16 straight Test victories, undisputed status as the world’s best team and World Cup glory in 1999. He was seen as one of the game’s toughest players, revered for his no-nonsense attitude and his hard-nosed captaincy.
But that didn’t protect him from Chappell, who accused Waugh of being a selfish cricketer in 1999 when he took over as Australia’s captain.
It was an accusation Waugh found bemusing but one that Chappell still stands by, taking things a step further by labelling Waugh the “most selfish Australian cricketer” he has ever seen. He wasn’t the greatest fan of his captaincy either.
“But the thing I couldn’t abide with Steve was that he was such a selfish cricketer,” Chappell said in Test of Character.
“When he came out and said this was to be his last season, so he could have the grand tour and get all the accolades and all of that s**t, he called Damien Martyn through for a ridiculous run at the Gabba. Damien should have just stayed where he was and Steve would have been run out by miles. Disgraceful. That’s just a minor example but there are many, many examples.
“I shouldn’t say he’s the most selfish cricketer I’ve ever seen because he’s not, but he’s certainly the most selfish Australian cricketer I’ve ever seen.”
Chappell does not give much credence to Waugh’s reliance on psychological and verbal pressure to bring about “mental disintegration”.
“The difference with the modern game is that I keep reading that it’s (sledging) all part of the game – players, umpires, administrators, they all say it. That’s total bulls**t. And what really annoys me is when it’s premeditated,” Chappell said.
“Darren Lehmann says, ‘We’ve got to get under their noses and play aggressive cricket’. Well, the two most aggressive fast bowlers I ever played against, Snow and Roberts, never said one word to me and I never said one word to them.
“But, mate, I knew I was in one hell of a contest! Anything said on the field in my time was heat of the moment – that’s going to happen because you’ve got two teams trying like s**t to win. It’s up to the umpires to step in, or to speak to the captain to sort things out if a fast bowler is off his face. And the umpire should come to me because, as captain, I should know my players and know how to handle them. But this premeditated stuff, Steve Waugh’s ‘mental disintegration’ … it’s total bulls**t.”
CHAPPELL v DON BRADMAN
Bradman and the Chappell family never did get along.
Despite being the greatest batsman in history, Bradman was a divisive figure in the dressing room, repeatedly clashing with Jack Fingleton, Bill O’Reilly and Victor Richardson, who was grandfather of Ian, Greg and Trevor Chappell
A generation later, Chappell clashed heads with the Don himself.
With Australia’s cricketers battling for a pay rise, captain Chappell approached Bradman, who was chairman of the Australian Cricket Board to plead his case. He believed Bradman would be open to his arguments, having himself had a dispute with the cricket board of his time over financial matters.
“Bradman lied to me and the other problem I had with him was that because I came from a cricketing family, I knew his history, in that he’d had problems with the Board and some of those problems were over finance,” Chappell said.
“So, I went to Bradman mistakenly thinking there would be empathy there when I was fighting for better pay and conditions for my players. But it was totally the opposite – it was as though I was asking him to spend his own money.”
CHAPPELL v IAN BOTHAM
Chappell and Botham share a colourful history.
The pair famously clashed in a bar in Melbourne in 1977 and things got physical. How physical is another question, with the two men both providing vastly different accounts of what happened.
According to Botham, he landed a punch on Chappell that knocked him off his chair and into a crowd of footy players before chasing him out of the bar. According to Chappell, he was pushed out of his chair, threatened with a glass and left the bar calmly while his teammates held Botham back.
Thirty-three years later the pair clashed again in a carpark during the fourth Ashes Test at Adelaide Oval in 2010. Going by what Chappell had to say in Test of Character, the animosity between the pair remains as high as ever.
“Botham? I don’t have anything in common with Ian Botham. I thought he was gutless as a cricketer for the little bit that I played against him, of the long-term commentators he’s the worst by so far it doesn’t matter, and I find him a very boring human being,” Chappell said.
“I’ve got no intention of making up with him unless he wants to apologise for making up lies about me. He and the truth have a very distant relationship. I don’t see that one ever repairing; certainly not from my side.”
