Ian Chappell fashioned an Australian team in his own image between 1971 and 1975: aggressive, resourceful and insouciant. A dauntless batsman partial to the hook and pull, he inherited the post of captain from Bill Lawry with the team at a low ebb, but others fed off his unhesitating self-belief and conviction that team goals were paramount, and he never lost a series. Some of his personal bests as a batsman, meanwhile, were in partnership with his brother Greg, notably at The Oval in August 1972, and at Wellington in March 1974. English commentator John Arlott described him as "a cricketer of effect rather than the graces", and his part in the World Series Cricket schism arose after years of disaffection with cricket officialdom. He later became a trenchant TV commentator.
Gideon Haigh