Almanac (Cricket) Book Review – Playing to Win: Seeing a bit of Australia in the 1972 Ashes series.

 

 

 

 

Although you won’t find it in the official fixtures, the final game of the 1972 Ashes was played on a Sunday at Drummoyne Oval in early October. That was when Ian Chappell’s Australians faced another Australian XI captained by John Benaud in a one-day match to raise money for children from the country needing treatment for cerebral palsy in Sydney.

 

It had been almost two months since the dramatic final Test win at the Oval that evened the series. Across the world, a bleary-eyed nation went to work the next day, having stayed up late to watch Rod Marsh and Paul Sheahan skip their way through the crowd after victory.

 

 

 

The Australian reunion for the charity match was when the team realised the impact they had had on the country over the previous five months. Their bus ground to a halt trying to navigate through the crowd that filled the street leading to the ground – an estimated 15,000 were there.

 

Eventually, the bus driver suggested the only way the players would get in was by walking, and so they joined the esky-carrying throng. Ian Chappell has reflected on how they captured the public imagination and believes it is because Australia saw a bit of itself in the team and its characters.

 

In the sunburn and sideburn summers that followed, Australia dominated Pakistan, New Zealand, England and the West Indies and played in a manner Chappell promised upon arrival in London in 1972 – ‘We are here to play attacking cricket’.

 

It was a step away from Bill Lawry’s teams that made sure a match couldn’t be lost before starting to try to win it. The different attitude and atmosphere created a winter full of moments – Bob Massie and Greg Chappell at Lord’s, Dennis Lillee’s 6/66 and all that, Ian Chappell pulling John Snow off his nose, Rod Marsh flying horizontal and the one-off outbreak of Fusarium at Headingly.

 

It seemed like cricket’s youthful summer, but the 1972 Australians were on average one year older than Lawry’s 1968 tourists – it was the enthusiasm and verve that made them seem younger and fresher.

 

All this is captured in Barry Nicholls’ new book: Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes.

 

Drawing on contemporary records supplemented by reflective interviews, Nicholls spreads the whole tour out over the pages and takes you from ‘I had forgotten that’ to ‘I had no idea about that.’

 

In between the cricket are details of another life and time – Carnaby Street, drinking in the Waldorf Hotel with Mick Jagger, curators in overcoats and cloth caps pushing mowers, Victorian-era facilities, fishing, golfing, music and nightclubbing.

 

Team Manager Ray Steele told the captain on the way over that history would not record this as the ’1972 Australians’ but as ‘Ian Chappell’s Australians’ and so there are hints of how he created his team by expectation.

 

When Ross Edwards suggests his captain might move him squarer at point, he hears back, ‘If you think you should go squarer, then bloody well go squarer. You’re the cover specialist on the team. I have a few other things to consider besides looking after you. You’re an Australian cricketer now.’

 

It was the first time Edwards started thinking for himself on the cricket field.

 

Edwards, along with Ashley Mallett, Jeff Hammond, Bruce Francis, David Colley and Graeme Watson are all brought out of the shadows cast by Lillee, Massie, the Chappells, Marsh and Keith Stackpole.

 

For Hammond, the tour was a foretaste of the West Indies in 1973, where he would have new ball heroics … while for Colley, an important half-century at Trent Bridge was the highlight of his three Tests and a tour that left him with three spinal fractures.

 

‘It’s only when you get older you realise how important an Ashes tour is. Every day you were walking in heaven. You were considered an important person.’

 

By retelling the 1972 Ashes, Nicholls allows Australians to revisit this series and, more than 50 years on, perhaps still see some of themselves looking back from a memorable tour.

 

 

 

 

To read more by Michael Sexton as well as reviews of his books click here.

 

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