Almanac Book Review: ‘Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes’ reviewed by Ken Piesse

 

Review of Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes – Barry Nicholls

 

 

Don’t you just love a book so entrancing and evocative you simply can’t put it down? Barry Nicholls’ arresting memoir of Australia’s coming-of-age Ashes tour in 1972 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 60 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 (Chappell) shouldn’t be in charge of a ludo team, let alone an Australian side bound for a Test series in England.’ The writer was unnamed.

 

Playing to win, Australia and the 1972 Ashes is engrossing and immersive, providing an expert and sometimes rollicking match-by-match analysis on a tour significant for the emergence 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.

 

Arctic weather greeted their arrival before the sun shone and the team blossomed from the early fixture against Hampshire where Dennis Lillee was able to bowl unimpeded and was so relieved he downed a jug of Foster’s Lager, just entering the English market.

 

The team’s London base was the Waldorf. The players delighted in the sights of Carnaby Street, hung out with Mick Jagger and met all sorts of important people from the Queen to Sigmund Freud. They dressed flashily. Purple suits, buckle shoes, flares, flowery extra-wide ties to go with their long-hair, moustaches and mutton chop sideburns.

 

Sweet-talking promotional guru Edwards and his roomie Ashley Mallett won instant popularity with their expert marketing which saw 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 along with the playlist songs in the team bus from ‘Crocodile Rock’ and  ‘American Pie’ to Billy Thorpe’s ‘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 brilliantly dissected – and almost worth a book in itself. Coming around the wicket to the left-handers, his banana-like swing confounded a top six, resulting in an unforgettable Boys’ Own debut.

 

While Massie had operated around the wicket during his league days in Scotland, his use of the tactic – commonplace now but revolutionary then – happened by accident in an impromptu two-man net session with Edwards, 12^th 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 it?’

 

‘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. He took eight for 84 in the first innings and eight for 53 in the second.  Suddenly it was 1-1. Game on.

 

This review first appeared in ‘Universal’s Summer Cricket Tour Guide 2025 – 26’

 

 

 Barry will be speaking in Adelaide over the Melbourne Cup weekend at:

 

Nov 4   State Library of SA
More info:  https://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/events/tuesday-talks-books-my-life-barry-nicholls

 

Nov 5   ASSH
Details and RSVP: Bernard Whimpress       [email protected]

 

Nov 6   Payneham CC
Details and RSVP: Malcolm Ashwood          [email protected]

 

 

You can read more from Barry Nicholls Here

 

 

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