His loyalty to the game, and to the people who win his respect and friendship, has been remarkable, and his writing has embodied something of that
Sambit Bal24-Feb-2025I was on another call when his name flashed on my phone, and instinct told me what it might be about. I have known Ian Chappell for about 25 years and he rarely calls. He usually emails, or if the matter is immediate, he will text. SMS was replaced by Whatsapp in recent years, but it would take something exceptional for him to call.Of course, it wouldn’t have been like him to not call about something like this. Email or a text just wouldn’t do.Before I called him back, I showed the missed-call notification to a colleague. This could be it, I told him. We had discussed the possibility a few times since Ian retired from broadcasting in 2022, but I nurtured the fond wish that he would carry on with the writing for as long as I was in this job.Related
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Ian Chappell never quit on people.I first interacted with him in the year 2000, when I worked for total-cricket.com, an ambitious digital venture that assembled a galaxy of international broadcasters to work for it. Ian wrote a weekly column for the site on Sundays, and his piece would be in the mailbox every Friday, without a typo, every paragraph neatly marked, the wordcount roughly the same each time, dateline on top, and “ATTENTION: Sambit Bal” just below.The venture ran into trouble after a while and only a skeletal version remained after most of us were relieved of our jobs. I soon moved on to wisden.com, which would become wisdencricinfo.com, and eventually espncricinfo.com. When I sought to enlist Ian to write, he declined politely. He couldn’t abandon the site he was writing for, more so when it was struggling. He remained the last and sole columnist for total-cricket till it wound up.Once he was in your corner, his loyalty was absolute and unflinching. I once interviewed the late Terry Jenner, the Australian legspinner, who played all of his nine Tests under Ian’s captaincy. A decade after his retirement, Jenner was imprisoned upon being convicted for a white-collar crime. The only team-mate to visit him in jail was Ian Chappell. Jenner remembered being embarrassed and overwhelmed.”Ian looked me in the eye,” said Jenner, who mentored Shane Warne, and would go on to become an advisor to the Australian Cricket Academy, “and said, ‘Once captain, always captain.'”Ian finally came on board a few years later, but there was one condition. He had also been approached by Clayton Murzello, the sports editor of , an afternoon paper in Mumbai, so we would have to share the column. We did and that continued for close to 20 years.Chappell in his Sydney home in 2006. “Writing has been a favoured task,” he wrote in his farewell column•Fairfax Media/Getty ImagesWe never spoke money. And till corporate norms mandated it, we didn’t even have a contract. He accepted whatever we could afford to pay then, and whatever we could raise it to in subsequent years. He would introduce me to people as “Boss”, and however much in jest those people might have taken it, it left me utterly embarrassed. Through these 20 years, whenever he was approached by another website for the odd article, he would either decline or seek permission from me, though no exclusivity clause was ever written, or implied, in our agreement.Over the years he also worked in our studios for our video analysis shows, and apart from his sharp insights and exemplary professionalism, what stood out was how he made everyone around him feel. Generous and warm, he tried to make sure he knew, and remembered, people by their first names, made sure he greeted everyone around him, and was always quick with a joke or a story. (And how vividly and with what relish he reeled them off.) The idea of equality wasn’t just a catchphrase but a way of life for him. Our crew looked forward to the days he was around.His writing – punchy, sharp, and anecdotal – stayed consistent to his beliefs and values. Non-partisan and non-parochial, he called it as he saw it. He had strong opinions and the backbone needed to express them without fear of consequences. People knew better than to try to sway him to toe the party line. It was impossible to win an argument with him, but you could disagree with him and retain his respect if he knew you came from an honest place.At the heart of his belief system was a deep love of the game, and he raised his voice to the point of repetition against everything that threatened its welfare in his eyes.As always, he knew when to stop. When I got on that call with him, he told me about a thing he had learnt from Richie Benaud: when it’s time to retire, you just know. Writing lasted the longest of his careers, but 50 years later was a good time to go. I didn’t try to talk him out of it. The game gives to everyone who comes in touch with it, and the most to the players who grace it, but Ian has more than settled his debts.I didn’t watch him play, but the idea of Ian Chappell – fierce competitor, beloved leader, and the very embodiment of Australianism as we knew it – was very much a part of my consciousness. You know what they say about meeting your heroes, but with Ian, there was never a chance of disappointment. As a cricketer and captain, he will always count among the greats, but the man I came to know is extraordinary. It’s been an honour, absolutely.
