Chappelli Speaks Out

Based on interviews by Ashley Mallet with Ian Chappell, this book presents Ian Chappell’s reflections on his career, players he played with and against, and on current and past cricketing issues. Ian Chappell, the man they call Chappelli, became Australia’s Test cricket captain on 4 February 1971. In 1959, a sixteen-year-old Chappell was told to write down his cricket ambitions on a piece of paper and carry it with him always as a constant reminder of what he wanted to achieve in the game. So I took a piece of piece of paper and wrote, "My ambition is to captain Australia". Frankly, to this day I don’t know why I wrote down these words because I don’t think I had any great ambition to be captain of Australia. I think what happened was that I thought, "What is the highest thing you could achieve in Australian cricket?". The answer was logically to captain Australia. So that’s what I wrote on my piece of paper. I still had it in my wallet the very day I learnt that I was to be picked to be Test captain in 1971. It had done its job, so after some time I threw it away.’ In Chappelli Speaks Out, the man many regard to be one of Australia’s greatest Test captains, talks frankly with Ashley Mallet about his years in cricket, other cricketers both past and present, the administration of the game and his involvement in sometimes controversial social causes such as the campaign against refugee detention centres. This is the story of a man who is as forthright as he is fair, and who led Australian cricket through its most successful and its most turbulent times.