WORLD Series Cricketer and former Australian captain Greg Chappell sympathised with Sir Donald Bradman’s post-WSC concerns about cricket becoming a business rather than a pastime.
But Chappell also believes the game is better as a result of the WSC revolution and doesn’t see the clock being turned back.
Talking to Sir Donald at the SACA one day, well after WSC, Chappell says he took the opportunity to ask Bradman why he resisted the revolution so strongly.
“His answer was that sport was not meant to be a business, it was meant to be a pastime and lost something when it became a business – and I think he was right in some ways,” Chappell told www.cricket.com.au, citing the impact on spontaneity and excitement for players.
However, Chappell also believes the game and the players emerged better for the WSC experience, with players improving their skills and toughness while the administration, and marketing and promotion of cricket improved, as did cricket’s understanding of the value the players brought to the game
Other sports also benefited from the WSC experience, with players being better respected for their value across sports other than cricket as administrators elsewhere noted the cricket experience.
Chappell believes Kerry Packer understood the game – he even played it a little with some ability – and rates him highly for his respect of and loyalty to the cricketers he signed for WSC, even at a time when WSC looked like it might be a bottomless money pit for him and at a time when his own advisers were expressing their concern.
And he supported Packer’s decision to appoint Ian Chappell as WSC Australian captain rather than himself, despite the fact that Greg was Australian captain at the time of the WSC signings.
“I was not surprised Kerry Packer wanted Ian as captain … he was a natural captain of that group,” he said.
World Series Cricket was the toughest cricket Greg Chappell has played and forced him to lift his own game at a time when he now believes he had been getting away with succeeding without seeking to reach 100 per cent of his own potential.
“We really had to work hard to make runs,” he said.
The quality of the cricket, and the constancy with no respite and no ability to drop back to first-class cricket to retune if necessary, made it particularly tough.
The quality of the drop-in pitches varied but he rates the Sydney Showgrounds drop-ins as the best pitches he has played on.
In the end, it was the quality of WSC’s cricket above all else, including its innovations, that made it the success it became, he said.
Chappell said he enjoyed the just-concluded Channel Nine mini-series Howzat and, once he got used to the actors’ faces representing the players he knew well, found the series true to history.