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| BROTHERS IN ARMS IAN & GREG CHAPPELL. |
The
game of cricket has had a number of famous cricketer- sibling combinations. It
has always been interesting to study some of these siblings and how they interacted with each
other when they played for their national team together. There have been some
very famous cricketers who have had
brothers who played successfully for
their teams. To quote a few, the CHAPPELL brothers and the WAUGH brothers played successfully for a long time
for Australia. The AMARNATH brothers who played for India and the FLOWER
brothers who played for Zimbabwe over quite some time with some success. In
this first part of the article, we will look at the famous Chappell brothers,
IAN and GREG who both captained Australia
and were leading batsmen for their team.
THE
CHALLPELL BROTHERS ( Ian and Greg Chappell )— Ian Chappell , the first of the
three Chappell brothers who was born to martin and Jeanee in Adelaide
was greatly influenced by his
maternal grand father Victor Richardson who was
an all round sportsman who also captained Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. Ian Chappell
was quickly made familiar to cricket by his father who was a noted grade
cricketer for Adelaide. The Chappell brothers ian, greg and trevor were given
batting lessons from an early age Ian chappell was always referred to as CHAPPELLI owing to the scoreboard which had him as chappell I and greg as chappell G. Ian Chappell
was greatly influenced in his formative years by the aggressive style of Gary Sobers
of the west indies and Les Favell a
south Australian captain. At the age of 18, Ian was selected to play his debut
first class match for south Australia
when he replaced Gary Sobers who was selected to play a test match in the Carribean in 1962. Right from the
onset Ian Chappell was a blunt and a no nonsense sort of a cricketer. He was a very tough and an attacking batsman who
loved to play the cross batted shots especially the cut and the hook shot. In fact
he would always say “ 3 bouncers in an over should mean 12 runs to me “. He had
a habit of gritting his teeth when he faced up bowlers. Early on Ian Chappell
was a lower order batsman who batted at 7 and was a useful leg spinner and
fielded outstandingly in the slips.
Ian Chappell also captained the Australian team from 1971-75 following the sacking
of the incumbent captain Bill Lawry He did not lose a single test series as
captain no mean feat.. Ian Chappell had a very aggressive and a head on
approach which he instilled on his team and they also came to be known as the
ugly Australians with the issue of sledging gaining prominence for the first time during Ian Chappell’s
tenure as captain. He would often say “although we didn't deliberately set out
to be a 'bunch of bastards' when we walked on to the field, I'd much prefer any
team I captained to be described like that than as 'a nice bunch of blokes on
the field.' As captain of Australia my philosophy was simple: between 11.00am
and 6.00pm there was no time to be a nice guy. I believed that on the field
players should concentrate on giving their best to the team, to themselves and
to winning; in other words, playing hard and fairly within the rules. To my mind,
doing all that left no time for being a nice guy”. He was also a
players captain and in many ways was responsible for the
professionalism in Australian cricket. During Chappell’s days the
players had meagre match salaries and Chappell did not take this things lying
down and also took on Donald Bradman and got his point across in no uncertain
terms and managed to convince the board to increase the match salaries of the Aussie
players . the 1970’s is easily known as the Chappell era. Both the brothers
Greg and Ian Chappell had different batting styles with Ian Chappell who batted
at no 3 , he was an attacking stroke maker who did not mind playing cross
batted shots and took the game to the opposition where as Greg Chappell who
batted at no 4 was a model of concentration and precise timer of the cricket
ball. Greg Chappell was one of the greatest Australian batsman and his game was
based on classical footwork and fierce concentration.
The
Chappell brothers had made an immense
contribution to the Australian cricketing
circles. In spite of Greg Chappell being
his younger brother, Ian Chappell never
called him my brother Greg, it was always Greg Chappell which indeed helped Greg
carve out a niche for himself in the cricketing fraternity. Ian was also very
critical of Greg Chappell when the later was involved in an underarm incident
where Greg Chappell had ordered his
younger brother Trevor Chappell to bowl an underarm ball when new Zealand
needed 5 runs to get of the last ball in an ODI. In 1981. The two brothers had mutual respect for each
other but there was no untoward brotherly love between them. They behaved with
each other in an absolutely professional manner. Maybe their roots during their
childhood had to do with this approach. The 2 Chappell brothers would play hard and uncompromising backyard
cricket Ian Chappell would always be Australia
and Greg would invariably be England much to the despair of the younger
sibling. The 2 would play fierce and combative cricket and that is where their
tough but fair cricketing spirit must be credited.
Both
the brothers captained the Australian team with Ian captaining from 1971-75 and
Greg having 2 stints of the captaincy
after Ian retired from test cricket from 1975-77 and again from 1979-1984 till the end of his
career. The Chappell brothers scored a century in the same innings in the oval
test of 1974 and became the first pair of brothers to have done so and even
bettered the achievement when they both scored a century in each innings in Wellington
against New Zealand in the same year. Between
1977-79, Greg Chappell had joined the Kerry packer led world series cricket (
WSC ) owing to discontentment with the Aussie cricket board over player salaries
and a host of other issues Greg Chappell became the first player to score
centuries in both his first and last test. A lot of the modern day players owe
a lot to Ian Chappell for the present career scenario in international
cricket. The Chappell brothers always
enjoyed a tough but fair relationship amongst them and were typical Aussie blokes
in every respect. The personality of these 2 captains also came through on
their team. Ian Chappell was a very strong character and always believed that
the players had to take their decisions and apply methods which suited them
rather than relying on coaches. Ian Chappell also became a successful media commentator
for channel 9 and also has enjoyed success in
speaking his mind and voicing his
opinions about various issues on cricket. Whereas Greg Chappell also did some
brief commentary stint and was appointed
coach of Indian team from 2005-07. He had
a rather scandalous stint as coach and his man managerial skills came in for
some flak as he is alleged to have caused a rift among the senior and the young
players in the Indian team. Finally after
India’s early exit from the 2007 world cup, Chappell was sacked as coach .
