I'm in Glenelg on the Adelaide coast to meet a born leader.
In the 1970s, armed with just a moustache, a steely glare
and a casually unbuttoned shirt,
he led Australian cricket out of the gloom
and into the light of a golden age.
It's the fearless Ian Chappell.
What a delight. Ian Chappell, hello.
Hi. How are you? You alright? I'm really good.
We've got to do two. Sorry. French, yes.
Yes, very French.
Now, why are we here?
This is Leak Avenue, Glenelg North. This is the family home.
Well, it was nothing like what it is now
but out the back was the backyard pitch that Martin made.
Your dad Martin actually built you a pitch for you and the boys?
Yeah, yeah. Half a pitch it was.
Gee, he was getting in early, wasn't he, Ian?
Yeah. Well, he got me coached when I was five.
So I started at five, yeah.
And you used real balls, didn't you? There'd be no soft balls.
Martin would not allow us to use tennis balls.
It was either a baseball or a cricket ball.
And you would be walking around the house minding your own business,
whoo, suddenly one would get fired at you.
And what about this, this is a canal?
This is a continuation of the Sturt Creek.
Right near the airport as you can hear.
Oh, yes we're right near the airport. There'll be planes today.
There's going to be heat.
Shall we go off and find another home away from home?
Yeah, the baseball club. Let's go.
Oh, hello. The Charger.
This is the first one I actually bought with my own money.
One of the great things about our family life was music.
If I got into the car first, you know, rock'n'roll is just starting
so I'm boom, you know, I hit the button
and get on the rock'n'roll
and Martin would say, "Turn that shit off.
"That's not music, that's just noise."
And one day when my daughter is, probably in her 20s,
I said, "You put the radio on, you know, the station you like."
After about two minutes I said,
"Man, that shit's not music, that's just noise."
And I thought, "Christ you're becoming your father."
♪ Jump in my car I wanna take you home
♪ Jump in my car
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
For many years, Ian Chappell
was the very embodiment of Australian sport.
As far as I'm concerned when I'm out on the field I try to entertain
to the best of my ability.
The grandson of Test captain Victor Richardson
and elder brother of fellow cricketers Greg and Trevor,
Ian shaped Australian cricket in his own, uncompromising image.
After retiring from the field
he became a leading commentator on the game.
As far as I'm concerned everybody is equal.
And more recently has spoken out on the plight of asylum seekers
as a special representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Look at this. Yeah.
Now, I had no idea that baseball was a thing, for cricketers.
Yeah. Well, you see in those days it was a winter game
so we played baseball in the winter and cricket in the summer.
So are the skills transferable from cricket to baseball?
Well, you're watching a moving ball onto a bat so it's complementary.
And obviously for the fielding it's terrific, you know,
for throwing particularly.
We've both got shoes.
We've got tops. Let us in. Rightio.
How fabulous.
This was built while my father was president of the club.
What used to happen, we'd practise Sunday mornings
and then we'd all be up building the building.
So, how the hell the bloody thing is still up is beyond me.
You built it? Yeah. A lot of the players and...
He built it. They built it with their bare hands.
I played in the first A-grade premiership team.
Come here. I'll show you.
Here we are after we'd won.
I was young once.
Was it hard giving up baseball?
Yeah, yeah. I had an equal love for baseball and cricket.
As soon as I stopped playing cricket in 1980
I went to Sydney and I started playing baseball again
because I just, you know, I missed all those years.
This is the four state representatives in 1964.
I was actually picked for Australia at baseball
before I was picked for Australia at cricket.
Now, that's the premiership team, '62 there.
Oh, and look where Ian is. He is bang in the middle.
Look at that. Are you a catcher?
That's what the catcher does, yeah.
Brains of the operation. Brains of the operation.
Yeah.
A lot of... I mean, you know,
the ability to sledge a little bit as well I should imagine.
No. No. Never a word... Never a word.
..passed my lips, no. Never a word spoken. I can imagine.
And you want to see me as a real youngster?
Yes, I do.
1949. The bat boy.
Oh, my God.
And there's the old man, Martin. And he was a catcher as well.
So, at Leak Avenue, who lived there?
There was your dad, Martin, your mum, Jeanne.
The boys. All five of us.
All five of you. Plus Champ.
Champ the dog of course. So Jeanne had no chance.
She... Three boys, husband and a male dog.
Male dog. She had no chance.
So, were you and your brothers a gang?
No.
So, were you competitive? Oh, yeah. It was very competitive.
What we used to do, there was a tank stand in the backyard,
so the score book would be on the tank stand.
And I was always Australia, Greg was England and that pissed him off.
Sure.
So you'd write down all the names of the team,
you'd go and bat, if you got out you had to go...
You'd take the gloves off, go back, write your score down
and then you'd come back as the next batsmen.
So it was very, very competitive.
In fact Greg, Greg got 100 on debut in Test cricket in Perth.
And somebody said to him, "You know, it must have been tough,
"you know, Test cricket, how did you find it? Tough?"
He said it was a breeze after playing against Ian in the backyard.
You're considered a captain and a man of strong opinions.
Do you think that started early for you as a kid?
Did you have strong opinions young?
I think it took a while
but, you know, it was there round the dinner table a lot
and particularly Jeanne.
Jeanne had plenty of opinions
and she was quite prepared to state them.
But it sounds like she ran a tight ship, though.
Oh, yeah. Jeanne was the one who disciplined me, belted.
You know, Martin was very shrewd.
His punishment was, "You're a little big head,
"I'm not taking you to the cricket or the baseball or the football."
And I'd feel like saying,
"Martin, for Christ sake hit me but take me to the sport, will you?"
So he was pretty... pretty shrewd.
Do you think your dad was proud of what he was seeing you become
and indeed what he managed to see you achieve?
Oh, I'm sure he was very proud.
Did he show it?
We're not a...
Greg has sort of brought this, uh...
..a bit more hugging and stuff in there.
It hasn't got through to me but we're not that sort of...
What in the team or in the family? No, no, just in the family.
No, no, no, bloody hugging. No. No hugging. What was I thinking?
We weren't that sort of family where we showed a lot of emotion
but you knew that he was proud.
As a kid, you know, when Martin played cricket
you would score for him.
You were a scorer. Yeah. Not because I wanted to score.
Because I used to go in my whites hoping that someone wouldn't turn up
and I'd get a game you see.
And did that ever happen? It happened once.
And I faced this... we were playing Sturt
and there was a guy called Blue Ballantyne, I'll never forget him.
And he was pretty quick, to me, you know.
I was about probably 11 by this stage
and he seemed pretty quick.
Anyhow, I couldn't score a lot of runs
because I was not strong enough
but I stayed in for 45 minutes.
So I'm pretty proud of myself.
Couldn't believe yourself?
We're driving home
and I'm expecting Mum to say, "Well done son, that was terrific."
Nothing.
We get home, he eats his steak, still nothing.
Finishes his steak, he says,
"Well, he says you're not playing C grade anymore."
I said, "What are you talking about?"
He said, "You're scared. You backed away from one ball."
He said, "As long as you're scared you're not playing."
And I was devastated because I thought...
I didn't think I had backed away, but he obviously thought I had.
So what's the lesson for you?
I think it was just the way things were in the family.
It was just the way we grew up.
And I think probably made me more determined
to show him that I wasn't scared.
Well, I'd love to see the school you went to.
Let's go.
Who taught you to drive?
1959 I got my licence at 16.
To get your licence you had to get 10 out of 12 questions right.
So anyhow, the day I turned 16 I go in and I get 10 right.
I get... obviously I get two wrong and the guy gives me a licence.
So without knowing if I can drive or not I just go outside,
get in a car, drive off with my licence, so no driving test.
Oh, my God.
So, this is Prince Alfred College.
Got here safely.
This is what I call a posh school.
Yeah. No, it wasn't posh. I beg to differ.
Look at the building. Look at the grounds. It's incredible.
1869.
You came here in 1869.
See what I did there. No.
1869. 150 years this year.
It's a beautiful old building. It's incredible.
Yeah.
Was academic achievement important to your parents?
No.
I think I got a sports scholarship if I'm being brutally frank.
So, you got a sports scholarship here?
Cricket. Yeah.
Cricket. Yeah, well, I would... Cricket really?
Extraordinary grounds. Yeah. Beautiful grounds.
This always used to be a very good pitch.
Beautiful. Enjoyed playing there.
This was the prefects' room.
But it was also the change room on playing days for the First XI.
I remember we played Kensington, who were one of the strong sides,
and we just got beaten when I was captain, I was very angry.
And batting in anger the next innings I got out
and so I'm really angry now.
I go in there and I fire my protector up against the wall
and "eff this game".
And I get a light tap on my shoulder and it's Chester Bennett, the coach,
and I'm thinking I'm in trouble now.
And he said, in his very soft spoken voice,
he said, "Ian, not much is gained in anger."
Unfortunately his words didn't really get through to me.
Oh, this is nice. Yeah, it is, isn't it?
That was my man up there.
That's your principal. John Dunning.
Jack we used to call him.
Not to his face. No. Of course.
Tremendous headmaster actually.
Ahh, amazing, he knew the names of all the kids, first names.
What's this room?
This used to be the assembly hall.
I thought it was a huge room.
I mean, 500 boys, we'd be squished.
And my other appearance here was in the Pirates of Penzance.
Hang on. What?
I was in the choir. You were in the choir?
I was in the choir. Pirates of Penzance.
Did you enjoy it?
I'm not sure that I enjoyed it. I think I was so nervous.
Were you?
And I remember my parents told me,
"You dopey little so-and-so, you didn't have your coat done up."
You know, we had the school uniform on I think to do it.
But we used to go.
♪ I am the Pirate King... ♪ It was all that.
And now you're reminding me. Yeah.
We could do the whole musical now if you'd like to.
Yeah.
Even though I was in the choir you don't want to hear me sing.
At some point does it click in,
"Cricket, it's what I want to keep trying to do"?
No. I had no idea what I was going to do.
Cricket wasn't a profession then.
I mean, $200 a Test match,
you weren't going to get rich doing that.
I just played cricket because I loved it.
And what did your parents want, do you think?
Jeanne probably just wanted me to be happy.
Oh. That's a good thing. Yeah. Sure it is.
Martin, well he definitely wanted me to play cricket
because they used to have the baseball on Armed Forces Radio
and obviously I had listened to a very exciting game
so I've gone in to my parents' bedroom at midnight,
which could have been dangerous,
anyhow, I've gone in and I said,
"Mum, when I get old enough I'm going to America to play baseball."
And he said, "Piss off back to bed, son, you're going to play cricket."
And that was it.
Class 4. Carpets on the floor. I don't remember that.
Let's have a little sit down.
What do you think you got from your dad?
Martin always told us, the three of us, play hard but play fair.
I was never in any doubt that if I'd have tried to cheat
or if I had cheated on the field,
even if it had been a Test match with 50,000 people there,
if Martin had been in the stand,
he would have walked out, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck
and said, "Off the field.
"And you're not going back out there
"until you can behave yourself properly."
I mean, I got a wonderful lesson from Martin when I was 11.
It was the first year of baseball at the primary school.
And I was captain of the baseball team
and the other teams didn't know so much about baseball
so we used to beat them easily.
So now we've got to play the winners of all the other districts.
And the first team we come up against is Unley Primary School.
And they had been playing baseball together for three or four years,
they're a really good team and they whoop us.
And I'm crying on the bench, you see.
And Martin comes over and he says,
"You, son, take your team over there
"and you congratulate them and say 'Well done'."
"No. I'm not going over there. They bloody beat us."
He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, picked me up,
he said, "You take your team over there and you congratulate them
"and say 'Well played'."
So I had to make it, you know, look like I'm not crying
and, you know, shake hands.
From then on I always, you know,
if we got beaten I always went into the opposition room
with my bottle of beer, "Well done, guys."
And actually it became a bit of a psychological ploy as well
because I realised that the teams who would march into our room
after we, we'd won,
"You'd think, "This mob haven't gone away yet."
But then the teams that you would beat
and they wouldn't come near you,
you would think, "We've got this mob."
Yeah.
Of course you are descended from cricketing royalty, Dick Richardson.
You're a Chappell, but you've written
that you feel like you're more Richardson than Chappell.
What does that mean?
You know, I've got more Richardson qualities I think.
Like what?
Oh, Vic was, you know, he was a cop-no-crap captain.
And I think I was a bit that way as well.
But Martin sounds like he was a cop-no-crap guy too.
Oh, yeah. As a sportsman Martin stood up for himself, yeah.
But Jeanne, her ability to speak her mind and state her opinions,
you know, I got that.
And I think a sense of fair play.
I think I got that from my mother as well.
You know, when...
You know, when I got involved with the refugees and so on
and some of those causes, you know, I think to myself
that's... that's the Jeanne in me coming out.
Cause she was very much about a sense of justice
and fair play.
What was Vic like? Vic was terrific.
Like, I admired him obviously for what he had done as a cricketer.
But then as I got to know him better and better I really liked the guy.
Hang on, was he ever a grandad to you?
'Cause sometimes I feel like you are talking about him as this entity.
Was he ever a grandfather?
I just looked upon him as a good bloke.
Um, yeah, I didn't sort of think of Martin as a father,
Vic as a grandfather.
I mean, I knew they were but I didn't think about them that way.
Really? I just...
Yeah. I just enjoyed Vic's company.
And the older I got the more I enjoyed his company.
Vic and Don Bradman didn't see eye to eye.
What was the problem there?
Well, in fact there weren't many players before the war
who liked Bradman.
They admired him as a player but as a person...
I spoke a lot to Bill O'Reilly about it.
You know, for instance when Bradman got the £1,000
that he made 300 in a day in England
and a supporter gave him £1,000
which in those days, 1930, a hell of a lot of money.
So a supporter gave him that? Yeah.
You know, gave him a cheque for £1,000.
Wow.
And Bill always said to me,
"You know, the little bastard didn't even put 50 quid on the bar
and say, "Boys have a beer."
I think they felt as though Bradman felt like,
you know, there wasn't a team around him.
You know, he sort of did...
Tiger always said, he explained it this way, he said,
"We didn't want him to come and have a drink with us
"but we just thought he could have put 50 quid on the bar, you know."
You know, I've always said one of my great regrets in cricket
is that I never saw him bat.
But as a person I... my dealings with him weren't that pleasant at all.
Mmm.
As a captain did you have run-ins with him?
Yeah. That's when my run-ins occurred.
And it was all over pay and conditions, you know.
And I always felt like it was us asking him to spend his own money.
That's how he made you feel. Right.
And I came out of one meeting,
which was to do with the South Australian players,
not the Australian players,
and I walked out of there thinking,
"Ian did you just walk in and put your wallet on the table
"and say, 'Don, here fill this up with money?'"
That's how he made me feel, you know. So... So it wasn't pleasant.
Did you like him personally?
No. I can't say I...
You know, I admired him as a cricketer,
I admired his cricket brain.
But the thing that I could never come to grips with
was his vindictiveness.
And he was a very vindictive person.
You know, the dropping of Keith Miller in 1949.
Keith Miller is the greatest all-rounder in the game
at that stage
and you leave him out of the Australian side
purely because you've had a disagreement with him?
Clarrie Grimmett, who is the best leg spin bowler in Australia,
he took 44 wickets under Vic's captaincy in South Africa
in a five-Test series.
Never played another Test.
But he had a run-in with Bradman.
Again, Bradman's cricket intelligence
would have told him that he had to pick Grimmett,
that he had to pick Miller, but his vindictiveness overrode that.
Alright. We're going to take you to the Adelaide Oval.
So, these are the Victor Richardson gates.
Victor York Richardson. Victor York Richardson.
VY, yeah.
Is it true that your parents' ashes were scattered somewhere nearby?
A-ha. Come on. I will show you.
We had a real family get together, the three boys,
some of the grandchildren were here.
And we thought this is the perfect spot,
you know, just behind Vic's gates.
So we spread Martin and Jeanne's ashes together in the garden here.
And they have told me it has been flourishing ever since.
Despite the Adelaide heat, still green.
Do you remember the first time you played on this oval?
Yeah. It would have been a club game against Adelaide.
Were you nervous? No. Not really.
Come on. You must have been nervous.
Well, you're always a bit nervous walking out to bat,
but not because it's Adelaide Oval,
just because you're hoping you'll get some runs.
It's a lovely cricket ground.
Suited me because it was short, short boundaries on the sides,
being a horizontal bat player.
Greg was very much a driver.
He didn't like the long boundaries so he pissed off to Brisbane
where the boundaries are shorter down the ground.
Did you want to be captain? And were you ready to be captain?
I was ready when the time came.
I hadn't been planning on it.
I will never forget where I was.
I was in the Oval Way Hotel just in Hindley Street there.
I used to be able to, I worked for WD & HO Wills in Mile End.
I used to be able to drive to the Oval Way, have a schnitzel
and two beers.
I mean, that's such a great diet, isn't it, for a sporting person?
It's perfect. Oh, perfect.
Especially the two beers.
Two beers, perfect.
And I could do all that in my lunch hour, you see, and back to Mile End.
Anyway, I'm at the Oval Way this day and the barman comes and says,
"Mr Chappell, there's a phone call for you."
I picked up the phone, "Hello."
It was Alan Shield, who I played cricket with,
and he was writing for the news.
And he said, "Congratulations, mate."
I said, "What are you talking about Sheff?"
He said, "You're captain of Australia."
I said, "Bullshit." And he said, "No. You're captain of Australia."
They'd sacked Bill Laurie. It was terrible the way they sacked him.
You know, they should have...
Bill had given such great service to Australia.
Someone should have had the guts to go to him face to face
and say, "Bill, you know, we're dropping you as captain."
But they didn't. He heard it on the radio.
And when I got home that night
I said to my wife, "Those bastards will never get me that way."
And, uh, they never did.
I always remember why I retired.
It was the fielding, being out on the field for six bloody hours.
Yeah Sure.
I'll never forget, I was probably about 27, 28
and I said to Richie Benaud,
"Retirement, that must be the hardest decision of your life."
And Richie, as always, very wise and correct, he said,
"Ian it's the easiest decision in the world."
He said, (CLICKS FINGERS) "You'll know like that."
Anyhow, this day at the Adelaide Oval I turned around
and I looked at the clock and it was 5 past 11.
We start at 11 o'clock.
And I looked at the clock and I thought, "Ian, it's over."
You know, if you're clock watching 5 past 11, it's finished.
This actually is exciting for me. Yeah.
For me, I get the excitement of the theatre of this,
the performance element of it.
Yeah. It's funny.
Well, maybe I'm different to a lot of other players
but it didn't make any difference how many people were here to me.
It's the excitement of the contest that gets me going.
And as a batsmen you're cocooning yourself,
you know, you're putting the noise out of your mind.
This may seem like a stupid question but do you still like cricket?
Yeah. I mean, cricket is like all sport.
It's a better game to play than it is to watch, you know.
You heard it here first everyone.
I wouldn't go and watch cricket and people find that really strange.
They say, "But that's what you're doing all the time."
I say, "No. I'm working at the cricket."
You know, that's not the same as just watching it.
I think what I would do
is if I heard that there was a young kid called Ponting
or a young kid called Warne, he's really exciting, he's a good player,
I would probably go to the ground,
I would try and be incognito somewhere,
have a look at them, make up my own mind.
I would probably last about half an hour or so and then go.
But to actually go and watch a game of cricket
I'm not very interested, no. Forget it.
Look at that. The Chappell Stand.
Yeah. I wonder who those clowns are. I have no idea.
This is the first time I've ever sat in the Chappell stands.
Do you like it? It's quite good.
It's OK, yeah. It's OK.
When the Chappell stands opened, your mum got to see that happen.
What was that for her, that moment?
Well, I think it was, you know, a great pride for her.
And in fact it was the Chappell Stand was over there.
It was right next to her father's gates
and the three boys were there.
So, I mean, any time she had the three boys around her she was happy.
Was she? Yeah. She... she loved that.
After you retired you wrote
that you realised that a lot of the time out there
you were boiling with rage.
No. More I was at boiling point.
And the thing that I didn't realise
was that when I was off the field and just living life
I was still simmering just below that boiling point.
And I didn't realise it until I retired.
And after I had been retired about 12 months
I suddenly thought, "Jesus I'm a lot more relaxed now."
And I guess it was just part of being a competitive sportsman
that you sort of had to keep that level up a lot of the time.
You know, you couldn't go from there to down here.
Or I couldn't anyhow.
I had to go from there to just there
and then back up to there when I was playing.
But suddenly, after 12 months of retirement,
I realised I was down here.
Is it that kind of anger, or is it that kind of feeling
that has fuelled you to, for example, be involved with the asylum seekers?
No. I wouldn't call it an anger. It's a competitiveness.
But there was an anger...
You know, when I was sitting back watching the Tampa crisis,
that, I got really angry then with what was going on.
And I was railing at the television set
and that's when Barbara-Ann said to me...
Is this your wife Barbara? Yeah.
She said, "Nothing much is achieved by yelling at the television set."
And she said, "Bad things happen when good people do nothing."
And that sort of spurred me to get off my bum and do something.
But probably one of the worst days of my life we, we went to Baxter,
which is up near Port Augusta,
and on the way there we drove past the Port Augusta jail.
And, you know, I looked at the jail and I thought,
"Oh, yeah. That's not a pretty picture,"
you know, barbed wire fence and all that sort of thing.
We got into Baxter and I was talking to this young lad,
he was from Bangladesh.
So, because he was a Bangladeshi he was a bit interested in cricket
and we got chatting.
And he... eventually he said, "What do you think of this place?"
And I said, "Well, it looks like a jail to me."
He said, "No. It's worse than a jail."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Well, if you're in jail and if you do the right thing,
"you get rewards for that."
He said, "But here you don't get any rewards.
"And if somebody does the wrong thing, we all get punished for it."
and that day I wasn't very proud of Australia.
What are your ambitions now?
It's probably going to sound very strange
but I don't class myself as a very ambitious person.
Things just seem to happen in my life.
A 50 break in snooker would pretty well satisfy me I think
if I could do that. Great. Over a beer perhaps.
No. No, the beer comes after.
It's all concentration in the game.
I equate drinking beer with it's over.
You know, work's over or play is over.
Game is over. Yes. Yes, now I drink.
Sport is not a social thing for me.
So, if I'm playing, whatever sport it is, I'm competing.
Oh, my God.
And so when the competing is over then I enjoy a drink.
Well, Ian it's been such a pleasure spending the day with you.
And I would love to go and perhaps go and play a game of snooker.
Not pool. No. Not pool, snooker.
Big table. With a beer.
Try and combine a bit of a drink and the sport at the same time
just to loosen it up. I can do that for you.
Can you? Yeah.
It's been an absolute pleasure. No. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you, Ian. Look at this.
Take this in first for a while. It's incredible.
You're a long way up, aren't you? You're a long way up.
Actually I came here to a Stones concert
and the stage was down there and we were actually on the field.
And I turned and looked back and I thought, "Shit, this is really big."