Well, amongst the three chappell brothers to donned their caps for the side, Ian was the most renouned of them all. he was the pre-cursor who led a side that had great talent and made dennis lillee one of the most potent bowler of modern cricket.
Ian Chappell spelt what aussie cricket is all about - fun, fierce competitiveness, absolutely no time for slack and complacency, and performance ! performance ! performance ... every day, every night -
Night ? Yep - where do you think the mightly stickers on T-shirts begin _ BIG BOYS PLAY AT NIGHT.
This man can be called as a father of modern ODI when Kerry Packer hijacked the best players in the world, build a brand Channel 9, and entertained Australia and most of the world with the most, most competitive cricket the world had ever seen in the last 150 years of international cricket. And the names - Ian, greg, Lillee, Rod Marsh, Lloyd, Richards, MCC players of South Africa origin, Pollock brothers, Mike Proctor, Peter Kirsten, creme-de-la creme of other SA players, Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Majid Khan and many others.
When they got back into their respective international side, though they were past their primes, the sides benefited tremendously. WI had the youngest players and as a result dominated Testcricket throughout the 80’’s and early 90s on this base. Australia retained their strength as Thommo - Greg Chappel, a good opening pair, good all-rounders made them great. Post retirement of Greg Chappell and Lillee, led Australia a period of reforms and team building, that gained momentum in the early nineties and led to Steve Waugh and Ponting to lead a juggernaut, even as other sides floundered and capitulated.
Ian was a fierce motivator, a man who would even make a tired fast bowler angry and insulted to bowl his nuts out by using someof his own language on Lillee’s leg cutters (I don’t see too many bowlers today who could bowl perfect outswingers and also leg-cutters.
India was fortunate during his tenure never to have faced the aussie fire as most of the packer sides were banned from playing test cricket for several years. Ian now serves cricket more as a commentator, interesting observer of the game, but still a master strategist as listening to his commentary or reading his writings, I can only raise a toast.
Well - as a batsman, Greg was one of the most talented Australian and to this day, I have yet to see an Australian to take a candle up to Greg Chappell in this art, but Ian without doubt can be called as the father of modern australian cricket and its competitive dominance