He’s never commented in the IPL. “You don’t get to see it in Australia on television. I keep up to date with it by following cricket websites,” says Ian Chappell, one of the most endearing voices on television for cricket fans.
The former Australian captain, on a visit to Mumbai, seemed excited to watch his first IPL game — the contest between the Mumbai Indians and Delhi Daredevils at the Wankhede on Saturday (April 14). ‘Chappelli,’ as he’s fondly known, enjoys an almost 50-year-old relationship with India. “I first came here in 1969 with the Australian team. One of the first things I noticed about the Indian fans was that they were very knowledgeable. They were telling me things about my career that I didn’t know about,” says the 74-year-old.
The man who closely follows Indian cricket, feels that ex-India all-rounder Ravi Shastri, who, like him, turned into a successful TV commentator and columnist, is the ideal person to coach the Indian team. “I’m not saying this just because Ravi is a mate of mine, but Ravi is the right bloke to be with captain Kohli. Kohli is a pretty aggressive thinker on his own, but Ravi is also very aggressive … as a captain he was an aggressive thinker. I’ve talked for many hours over red wine with Ravi, and his talks are always very aggressive — they’re always about winning the game. And Kohli is very much in that mould,” feels Chappell.
Citing an example of why he backs Shastri to sync well with Kohli, Chappell says: “I’ve said it many times, that Kohli’s century in the second innings at Adelaide (he got hundreds in both innings in the 2014-15 series) was the best counter-attacking innings that I’ve ever seen in a fourth innings. That was a result of communication between Ravi and Kohli. After the game, when some people asked him why didn’t he draw the game, he said: ‘the best way for us to draw the game was to try and win it.’ And I agree with him entirely. He was that close (snaps a finger) to winning the game, because if he hadn’t holed out in the deep, India would’ve won.”
Chappell feels the absence of the trio of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, all banned after indulging in ball-tampering in the Cape Town Test, makes India favourites to win their maiden Test series in Australia this winter. “I don’t know if India will win comfortably, but they’ll win. It’s certainly India’s best opportunity ever to win a series in Australia. Australia will be still hard to beat because they’ve got a very good bowling attack. The hardest part of the game is to get 20 wickets, and Australia will do that. But they won’t have many runs to play with,” he says.
Quizzed on what lessons world cricket can learn from the ball-tampering incident at Cape Town, he shoots from the hip. “They can learn about stupidity. There was plenty of that on show in Cape Town by the Australians. The ICC has already talked about trying to strengthen the penalties and also the ‘wording’ of ball-tampering. However, the questions that I have for the administrators is why are they reactive, rather than being proactive?
“That’s part of the problem with cricket administration. It takes a disaster and what gets on my nerves is that it’s always the players who get penalized for administrators’ mistakes. There’s been a lot of talk about what the ICC is going to do, but, as usual, with the ICC, I won’t be hanging by the neck while I’m waiting for them to do something, because I’m not strangling myself,” he fires, before adding: “I can no longer be disappointed by the ICC. They’ve done it so often, that I’m no longer surprised or disappointed by anything that they do,” he added.
He doesn’t agree that the bans on the disgraced Aussie trio are a bit harsh. “I think Cricket Australia got it right. CA has done particularly Smith and Warner a huge favour, because you imagine if Smith and Warner were playing next summer in Australia against India, they’re going to get booed at probably all of the Australian grounds. That wouldn’t have been great for CA’s image,” he points out.
Chappell believes it will be tough for the trio to bounce back from this massive setback. “I’m not sure if CA wants Warner back. Knowing the history of CA pretty well, I think they’ve probably been looking for a reason to get rid of him because he was quite outspoken during the dispute between the players and the administrators last year. So he may not be back. Smith will be back but I don’t think he will captain Australia again,” he says.