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"Steve Waugh was the most selfish Australian cricketer I've ever seen" : Ian Chappell

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http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/c...m/news-story/7e6b1567ccd3f3127148fc1adc1c8b4b

Chappell's at it again.

HE ranks among Australia’s greatest batsmen and most respected captains but thanks to his brutally honest opinions, Ian Chappell is far from universally loved.

Over his five-decade career as a player and a commentator, Chappell has never been afraid of sharing his thoughts and along the way, he has ruffled more than a few feathers.

In Jeremy Wilshire’s Test of Character: Confessions of Cricket Legends, old wounds are reopened, with Chappell withering in his assessments of the likes of Steve Waugh, Don Bradman and Ian Botham.

CHAPPELL v STEVE WAUGH

Few cricketers command more respect globally than Waugh.

As a captain, he led Australia to 16 straight Test victories, undisputed status as the world’s best team and World Cup glory in 1999. He was seen as one of the game’s toughest players, revered for his no-nonsense attitude and his hard-nosed captaincy.

But that didn’t protect him from Chappell, who accused Waugh of being a selfish cricketer in 1999 when he took over as Australia’s captain.

It was an accusation Waugh found bemusing but one that Chappell still stands by, taking things a step further by labelling Waugh the “most selfish Australian cricketer” he has ever seen. He wasn’t the greatest fan of his captaincy either.

“But the thing I couldn’t abide with Steve was that he was such a selfish cricketer,” Chappell said in Test of Character.

“When he came out and said this was to be his last season, so he could have the grand tour and get all the accolades and all of that s**t, he called Damien Martyn through for a ridiculous run at the Gabba. Damien should have just stayed where he was and Steve would have been run out by miles. Disgraceful. That’s just a minor example but there are many, many examples.

“I shouldn’t say he’s the most selfish cricketer I’ve ever seen because he’s not, but he’s certainly the most selfish Australian cricketer I’ve ever seen.”

Chappell does not give much credence to Waugh’s reliance on psychological and verbal pressure to bring about “mental disintegration”.

“The difference with the modern game is that I keep reading that it’s (sledging) all part of the game – players, umpires, administrators, they all say it. That’s total bulls**t. And what really annoys me is when it’s premeditated,” Chappell said.

“Darren Lehmann says, ‘We’ve got to get under their noses and play aggressive cricket’. Well, the two most aggressive fast bowlers I ever played against, Snow and Roberts, never said one word to me and I never said one word to them.

“But, mate, I knew I was in one hell of a contest! Anything said on the field in my time was heat of the moment – that’s going to happen because you’ve got two teams trying like s**t to win. It’s up to the umpires to step in, or to speak to the captain to sort things out if a fast bowler is off his face. And the umpire should come to me because, as captain, I should know my players and know how to handle them. But this premeditated stuff, Steve Waugh’s ‘mental disintegration’ … it’s total bulls**t.”

CHAPPELL v DON BRADMAN

Bradman and the Chappell family never did get along.

Despite being the greatest batsman in history, Bradman was a divisive figure in the dressing room, repeatedly clashing with Jack Fingleton, Bill O’Reilly and Victor Richardson, who was grandfather of Ian, Greg and Trevor Chappell

A generation later, Chappell clashed heads with the Don himself.

With Australia’s cricketers battling for a pay rise, captain Chappell approached Bradman, who was chairman of the Australian Cricket Board to plead his case. He believed Bradman would be open to his arguments, having himself had a dispute with the cricket board of his time over financial matters.

“Bradman lied to me and the other problem I had with him was that because I came from a cricketing family, I knew his history, in that he’d had problems with the Board and some of those problems were over finance,” Chappell said.

“So, I went to Bradman mistakenly thinking there would be empathy there when I was fighting for better pay and conditions for my players. But it was totally the opposite – it was as though I was asking him to spend his own money.”

CHAPPELL v IAN BOTHAM

Chappell and Botham share a colourful history.

The pair famously clashed in a bar in Melbourne in 1977 and things got physical. How physical is another question, with the two men both providing vastly different accounts of what happened.

According to Botham, he landed a punch on Chappell that knocked him off his chair and into a crowd of footy players before chasing him out of the bar. According to Chappell, he was pushed out of his chair, threatened with a glass and left the bar calmly while his teammates held Botham back.

Thirty-three years later the pair clashed again in a carpark during the fourth Ashes Test at Adelaide Oval in 2010. Going by what Chappell had to say in Test of Character, the animosity between the pair remains as high as ever.

“Botham? I don’t have anything in common with Ian Botham. I thought he was gutless as a cricketer for the little bit that I played against him, of the long-term commentators he’s the worst by so far it doesn’t matter, and I find him a very boring human being,” Chappell said.

“I’ve got no intention of making up with him unless he wants to apologise for making up lies about me. He and the truth have a very distant relationship. I don’t see that one ever repairing; certainly not from my side.”
Click to expand...
 
This guy is still holding a grudge against Bradman? The man passed away.

Let it go. :))
 
He has a point about sledging. The great WI side never used to sledge.
 
“I shouldn’t say he’s the most selfish cricketer I’ve ever seen because he’s not, but he’s certainly the most selfish Australian cricketer I’ve ever seen.”

Reckon he is talking about Tendulkar and Kallis
 
Chrish said:
“I shouldn’t say he’s the most selfish cricketer I’ve ever seen because he’s not, but he’s certainly the most selfish Australian cricketer I’ve ever seen.”

Reckon he is talking about Tendulkar and Kallis
Click to expand...

I reckon he is talking about Lara.
 
A bit rich, coming from Ian.

Ian himself made a crass sledge on Glenn Turner.

When Glenn Turner was married to his beautiful Indian wife Sukhi, who went on to become Mayor of Dunedin Chappell greeted his arrival at the crease with the comment: "Here comes the curry buggerer!"

This is as low as it can get and here he is sitting on a high horse giving lectures about sledging.
 
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EliteCynical said:
A bit rich, coming from Ian.

Ian himself made a crass sledge on Glenn Turner.

When Glenn Turner was married to his beautiful Indian wife Sukhi, who went on to become Mayor of Dunedin Chappell greeted his arrival at the crease with the comment: "Here comes the curry buggerer!"

This is as low as it can get and here he is sitting on a high horse giving lectures about sledging.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit stunned by Chappell's joke and googled it.

The only google result that turned up for 'curry buggerer' is a post on another forum.

Is there another source for this?

Sounds more like Tony Greig than Chappell, but political correctness has put pressure on professionals and crowds from saying this sort of thing since. And people change too.

I wonder if there's a thread where the racism of cricketers is catalogued.

Anyone?
 
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Ian Chappell seems to have amnesia i guess about his playing days. He was the one who started the culture of sledging in Australian team. During his captaincy Australian team was labelled as "Ugly Australians". A simple google search will give ample evidence of that. He was one of the most ruthless captain in history of cricket.
 
Ian Chappel is very Bold & Agressive.

He can say things at People's Face which others would avoid.


Sometimes it can get Nasty and it did few times.


Quality Analyst and very knowledgeable.
 
Looks like Pakistani ex-cricketers have been having some company all along!

I never heard of this before.
 
So Chappell has issues with Sachin,Bradman,Botham,Waugh remarkable just remarkable!
 
Lefthanded said:
I'm a bit stunned by Chappell's joke and googled it.

The only google result that turned up for 'curry buggerer' is a post on another forum.

Is there another source for this?

Sounds more like Tony Greig than Chappell, but political correctness has put pressure on professionals and crowds from saying this sort of thing since. And people change too.

I wonder if there's a thread where the racism of cricketers is catalogued.

Anyone?
Click to expand...

Don't know of any thread, but this article does a good job of bringing a few instances to mind:

https://www.google.com/amp/www.cric...the-gentlemans-game-132337/amp/?client=safari
 
I was reading this over breakfast in the hotel this morning when Chappelli came and sat near me.

I nearly choked on my food!
 
I don't get flustered over a lot of things in life. But today I woke up and Ian Chappell does his preview of India's tour of England for a well known cricket website.

He devotes one half sentence to Pakistan's drawn series with England in which he disparages us as "predictably inconsistent" - not seeming to realise we haven't lost to England in a Test series for 8 years and that this is a vastly inexperienced Pakistan team.

He then spends the rest of the article listing all of England's obvious problems (which every man and his dog that follow cricket is already aware of) and gushes over the Indian team which he seems to do in nearly EVERY one of his articles ! Chappell seems to talk more about them than Australia these days.

Now I'm not a nationalistic person and this India side is an excellent one who may well beat England and Australia this year.

However when previewing a series between two teams one would've thought you'd bother to devote more than one half sentence to the events of the previous series. Or maybe when you're an ex-Australian player with a punditry job for life cricket doesn't exist outside the Big 3 despite writing for a website that covers WORLD cricket.

I'm sick of this guy's condascending attitude towards Pakistan cricket, hope we smash his boys in the desert.
 
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Chappell doesn’t understand the “lone wolf” types like Waugh and Bradman, he thinks cricketers should spend all of their spare time lounging about in the pub drinking beer and kissing the feet of the senior pros. As a result he will generally be friendly towards the playboy types and talk disparagingly about his more mild-mannered peers.
 
James said:
Chappell doesn’t understand the “lone wolf” types like Waugh and Bradman, he thinks cricketers should spend all of their spare time lounging about in the pub drinking beer and kissing the feet of the senior pros. As a result he will generally be friendly towards the playboy types and talk disparagingly about his more mild-mannered peers.
Click to expand...

I think so. He tends to use his commentary and analysis as a tool to pursue his personal agendas with players. Anybody he has a problem with he would find ways to speak nonsense about their game too.

I remember how he turned into a Tendulkar critic just when his brother was being held accountable for ruining harmony in Indian cricket.

He is a great story teller and mostly a fearless spokesman but really take these sort of rants with a pinch of salt.
 
freelance_cricketer said:
I think so. He tends to use his commentary and analysis as a tool to pursue his personal agendas with players. Anybody he has a problem with he would find ways to speak nonsense about their game too.

I remember how he turned into a Tendulkar critic just when his brother was being held accountable for ruining harmony in Indian cricket.

He is a great story teller and mostly a fearless spokesman but really take these sort of rants with a pinch of salt.
Click to expand...

Aye, spot on FC.
 
Steve waugh was a limited batsman compared to Mark Waugh. He played percentage cricket well and was always willing to tough it out. Let us not forget he started his career as a medium pacer who could bat down the order. Gradually he evolved into a tough batsman.
 
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