Greg Chappell - "Underarm" Controversy and Bad Form

"Underarm" Controversy and Bad Form

The 1980-81 season brought another three way competition, this time with New Zealand and India. In the Tests, Australia had a convincing win over the Kiwis, but was held to a drawn series against India. Chappell was in good form throughout the summer, but managed only two international centuries. The first came at Sydney in an ODI against New Zealand, when Chappell set a record Australian score of 138*. Early in the new year, on the same ground, he played his first Test against India. Despite suffering a bad stomach upset, Chappell hit 204, an innings described by Wisden as "masterly". However, this season is best remembered for the triangular ODI series, specifically the third of the best of five finals series, played in Melbourne on 1 February 1981.

With the series tied at 1-1, Australia looked to have gained the upper hand by batting first and setting New Zealand a chase of 235 runs. Undisciplined bowling and fielding by the Australians, and a great innings from Kiwi opener Bruce Edgar narrowed the target to 15 with one over to play. Chappell's younger brother, Trevor, a batting all-rounder who specialised in bowling at the end of an innings, delivered the final over. From the first five balls, Trevor Chappell took two for 8, leaving the new batsman (Brian McKechnie) to score a six to tie the game. At this point, Greg Chappell intervened, told his brother to deliver the ball along the ground (i.e. underarm) and he then informed the umpire to let the batsman know of the change of bowling style. Despite the protestations of wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, the ball was delivered and the batsman simply put his bat in front of the ball to stop. He then hurled his bat away. A large crowd of 50,000 – mostly Australian – loudly booed the Australian team from the field.

Chappell was also captain of the ODI team concurrently with his Test captaincy, registering 21 wins and 25 losses from 49 matches; all but four of these matches were after the end of World Series Cricket, and Chappell never captained Australia in a Cricket World Cup tournament. His batting exploits in ODIs were not quite of the same magnitude as his Test match career, but he did hold the Australian record single-innings score (138 not against New Zealand in 1980) for more than ten years. His ODI captaincy career is most commonly remembered for the "underarm" incident in 1981 (see below).

Chappell played his last Test match in January 1984, making 182 in his final innings. Thus, Chappell became the first Test batsman in history to score centuries in both his first and last Test innings. Of all the Test batsmen who have retired since 1974 and scored more than 2,000 Test runs, Chappell's Test batting average of 53.86 is the highest. And if Chappell's batting average in Kerry Packer's "Supertests" (the hardest cricket Chappell says he ever played) were added to his test record, his overall average would be 54.30

After retirement, Chappell has remained connected with the sport in numerous capacities. Recently, he fulfilled a consultancy role for Pakistan and, between 20 May 2005 and 4 April 2007, was the coach of India. This role was the subject of much negative public and media commentary particularly involving his working relationship with former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly.