Don’t you love a book so entrancing and evocative you simply can’t put it down? Barry Nicholls’ masterly memoir of Australia’s coming-of-age Ashes tour in 1972 is immersive and sparkles from page 1 when Ian Chappell fielded a phone in a Hindley Street hotel one lunchtime.
‘Congratulations Chappelli,’ said the caller. ‘You’re the captain of Australia.’
Adelaide’s No.1 cricket writer Alan Shiell was invariably first with the headline news.
‘Bullshit… you’re joking?’
‘They’ve sacked Lawry. You’re the (new) captain.’
Chappell was amazed. Sir Donald Bradman was chairman of selectors. They weren’t exactly drinking pals. ‘It was me,’ said fellow selector Neil Harvey, years later. ‘We played a round of golf one day. He was the one.’
So began a tumultuous captaincy reign which today sees Chappell bracketed with Mark Taylor and Richie Benaud as the finest Australian Test captain of the last 50 years.
Assertive, positive and welcoming, Chappell’s leadership was full of flair, bravado and empowerment. He backed his players unconditionally. Cover specialist Ross Edwards – often the only fieldsman in front of the wicket – suggested one day that he should position himself a little squarer.
‘Mate,’ said Chappell. ‘You go where you reckon the ball is going. You know better than me.’
Not everyone was initially enamoured, however. When Chappell’s strategy of bowling Terry Jenner ahead of local favourite Kerry O’Keeffe backfired one afternoon in the Sydney international against the Rest of the World, the next day’s editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald was scathing. ‘He shouldn’t be in charge of a ludo team, let alone an Australian side bound for a Test series in England,’ said the unnamed writer.
Playing to win, Australia and the 1972 Ashes engrossingly analyses, match-by- match, a tour significant in the makings of Chappell’s champions. His young team had been labelled the worst Aussie touring team of them all, yet by winning the final Test at The Oval, the Australians tied an unforgettable rubber.
From arctic weather upon their arrival, the sun shone and the team blossomed from the fixture against Hampshire where a relieved Dennis Lillee was able to bowl unimpeded and celebrated by downing a jug of Foster’s Lager, which was just entering the English market.
The team’s London base was the Waldorf. The players visited Carnaby St and dressed flashily. Purple suits, buckle shoes, flares, flowery extra-wide ties and long-hair, moustaches and sideburns.
Edwards and his roomie Ashley Mallett won instant popularity with their expert marketing resulting in boxes of quality red, white and liqueur wines being regularly delivered gratis.
The comraderie amongst the players was tremendous. One night Greg Chappell and Paul Sheahan penned some ditties to the tune of the Quartermaster’s Store:

There was Stack, Stack, needing sauna’s front and back, on the tour, on the tour.
There was Stack, Stack, needing sauna’s front and back, on the Aussie England tour.

The team hotels, good and bad are all detailed. Even the playlist songs in the team bus from [italics] Crocodile Rock and [italics] American Pie to Billy Thorpe’s [italics] Most People I Know.
Nicholls misses little of the on-field banter too, like the time one young batsman Dudley Owen-Thomas from the Combined Universities needed a shoelace to be tied, just as Ian Chappell was walking past.
‘I say skipper,’ he said to Chappell nodding towards his boots.
‘Piss off pal,’ came the sharp retort. ‘I only do shoelaces for batsmen!’
Bob Massie’s wondrous debut match is almost deserving of a book on its own. Coming around the wicket to the left-handers his banana-like swing confounded a top six, resulting in a Boys’ Own debut, the most unforgettable in Ashes history.
While Massie had operated around the wicket during his league days in Scotland, his use of the tactic came totally accidentally in an impromptu two-man net session with Edwards, 12th man at Old Trafford. The popping crease for Massie’s normal over the wicket deliveries was damp and a little raised, so he bowled around the wicket instead, setting up an extraordinary 16-wicket Lord’s haul.
He’d been on hand on the opening morning at Lord’s when the umpires walked in and asked Ian Chappell which ball he’d like.
‘Would you like to pick a ball captain?’
Massie looked on and asked: ‘Can I pick the ball?’
‘Mate, you’ve gotta use it. Go for your life.’
Massie went through the box, carefully scrutinising each one before settling on the darkest one in the box. He took eight for 84 in the first innings and eight for 53 in the second. Suddenly it was 1-1. Game on – KP.