Happiness, hurt and hugs: Greg Chappell at 70

Greg Chappell is looking at a computer screen in a sprawling, open-plan Albion office on the north side of Brisbane. An executive assistant walks him through his schedule for the upcoming home summer. He nods politely, half-absorbing dates, times and flights. He is on level three of the National Cricket Centre, the headquarters of team performance at Cricket Australia. When they knocked the old building down and put up this glitzy replacement five years ago, they renamed the road outside 'Greg Chappell Street'. He wears black dress shoes, navy pants and a white business shirt, a plain white tee underneath. His desk makes up one-third of a three-person station, which he shares with coaches Ryan Harris and Chris Rogers. The man they named the street after does not have his own office.

Which is fine by him. Out on the floor, amid the hubbub, he feels energised. It might well be the busiest, longest cricket season he has seen. Two weeks shy of his 70th birthday, a waning in enthusiasm would be understandable. With Chappell though, it is not likely.

As national talent manager and national selector, Chappell is one of the most powerful figures in Australian cricket – just as he was four decades ago, while in the prime of his playing career.

Like the game he loves, Chappell has evolved while staying fundamentally the same. As he surveys the room from his seat in the north-west corner, his back to no-one, each person he sees is younger than him. He could be retired by now, he knows. He does see an end date somewhere out on the horizon, but just as he refuses to clutter his life with reminders of the past, he will not be distracted by an undefined day ahead. Pressed on the matter, he relents a little.

"I would see myself retired (in five years' time)," he says. "I would like to be involved in the lives of my grandchildren."

The simple sentiment is complicated by the Chappell backstory. It is one of fathers and sons and daughters, of tough love and terse words, long absences and missed moments. It traces back 60 years to a sandstone and brick home on Leak Avenue in North Glenelg, Adelaide, where the Chappell brothers – Ian, Greg and Trevor – grew up.

Image Id: 1A8626A80203418FBB79FB3204D5A317 Image Caption: Chappell remains one of the most powerful figures in Australian cricket // Getty

Seventy. It is a neat overlap that Chappell was born in the month of Bradman's final Test – August 1948 – and would go on to become the first to break his national Test runs record. In between, he learned from and clashed with The Don. The same went with Bradman's Indian equivalent, Sachin Tendulkar. His singlemindedness has been a blessing and a curse. He has an army of detractors within Australian cricket who, among other things, criticise his youth-first selection policy. The condemnation is nothing new. He has turned entire countries against him, had effigies burned in his name. Though it might seem otherwise, he has never developed a thick skin; the barbs pierce him, some deeper than others, but he has learned coping mechanisms along the way. As he approaches 70, he is not resistant to self-improvement – his golf game is testament to that – but there is a definite intransigence when it comes to his beliefs.

Those of the Chappell era – and that family name did define an era of cricket in this country – might need a moment to register the most gifted batsman of their generation is about to be a septuagenarian. How time flies. History describes Greg as poetry in motion, the elegance to Ian's fierce defiance. To a point, the stereotype masked his own ruthless streak. A close friend calls him "ferocious" in his competitiveness still. The latest crisis in Australian cricket has heightened that feeling. With their two best batsmen suspended, the most successful ODI nation in history has just been wiped five-nil by England for the first time. This summer, the Test side will face a high-quality Indian team looking to make history as the first to win a series in Australia. Meanwhile, those within and outside the tent are hopeful that men of not only talent, but character, will emerge from somewhere to restore the pride lost amid the ball-tampering fiasco. Rarely can the national selection panel have had so much riding on its decisions.

Chappell's guard drops when he begins talking about the steps needed to rebuild Australian cricket. Suddenly a more animated version of his self emerges. There are hand gestures, head shakes and expletives. His hunger for the cause is palpable. The feeling of defeat still burns, even half his life removed from playing. But he knows crises. He was a key figure in the World Series Cricket split. He fought with the Australian Cricket Board incessantly over players' rights through his career. He was a selector when Australia were in their mid-1980s mire. He has seen such situations present opportunities. Day-night cricket, professionalism, and Ian Healy – all byproducts of troubled times. The latest is just another type of challenge, which is the essence of what makes Chappell tick.

"That's what attracted me to the game," he says, "that challenge of pitting yourself against the best the opposition can put up. Unless you love the contest, you won't survive."

At his desk, musings about how he has stayed in the game for so long come back to one word: passion. He never thought he would be here at this advanced stage of his life. If you stretch it back 34 years, he didn't see cricket as part of his future at all. As far as he was concerned, he retired at the perfect time. Life was set to introduce him to wonders beyond cricket's horizon. It's easy to call in hindsight, but he was kidding himself; the game runs rich in his blood, too ingrained in his psyche to have ever turned his back on for good.

***

Chappell remembers a time when he did walk away. Devonport, Tasmania, 1988. He woke up on a Sunday morning and was struck by a moment of clarity. He had played his last Test more than four years earlier but was still bobbing along on cricket's carousel, having moved straight into a selector role. His eldest son was 13, an age where a relationship with a father can be permanently forged or forgotten. He suddenly feared what he could lose.

"I thought, wow, in a few years he's going to be gone – if I want a relationship with him, I need to do something now," he says. "I remember it as clearly as anything."

Chappell had a complex relationship with his own father, Martin, whom he lost to a heart attack in 1984, the same year of his Test retirement. In the space of a year, two cornerstones of his life were gone. Through his childhood, sport had been the language through which they had communicated. Martin was a stern man and Greg was unable to break down the emotional barriers that separated them.

"I don't recall ever having a hug with my father," Chappell says, adding: "But I'm sure he never got a hug from his father."

The feeling he remembers mostly is one of frustration. As a teenager, climbing into his dad's car after a productive day with bat or ball, and thinking – hoping – for any kind of compliment. Something as simple as a pat on the back or a Well played, Son.

"But no, it was, Why did you play that shot? Why did you get out like that?" he says.

It wasn't until Martin's final years that Chappell was able to reconcile within himself some of the issues he had let fester over time. He knew Martin loved him, just as he loved his brothers; the time he had poured into their cricket alone had been evidence of that. But there was a void there that was difficult to articulate. Ironically, the situation found its resolution when Chappell put distance between them by signing to play with Queensland. He reflects on his parents staying with them in Kenmore, in Brisbane's south-west.

"He sat on the edge of the pool, I was in the pool, and we had some good talks," he says.

The pair spoke about how hard Martin had been as a father, and the tough love given and received. They each said their piece. It brought them closer and provided Chappell with a sense of peace. He stored up the lessons, hoping to better utilise his experiences – and disappointments – with his own children. When he left cricket behind altogether, it was with a sense of fatherly duty. Similar feelings had nagged at him when he was playing. He hadn't met his eldest son until he was four-and-a-half months old. His daughter had survived his long summer absences by pretending he didn't exist.

"She couldn't understand why her father had to be away all the time," he says. "All her friends' fathers were home, so why wasn't I there? It was difficult for both of us."

Image Id: 6C3D17EC707545B1BEADBD51891A7A7B Image Caption: Chappell in full flow, Melbourne 1980 // Getty

It wasn't until his final Test series that he felt he even had a choice. Playing for Australia had been his lifelong ambition. It was impossible to curb that until he no longer felt the pull. His wife Judy had asked him point-blank more than once: Do you need to keep doing this? The answer, up until his final series, was always yes. The scars began to reveal themselves later. Two years after he retired, he went to Perth for a charity match. Before leaving, he told his daughter, who was around 10 at the time, he would see her in a couple of days. She asked where he was going. When he told her, she responded: Bloody cricket, I suppose? More than three decades on, the line stays with him.

He remembers tours when his spirit was at home with Judy. Meeting his first-born son and feeling awkward about holding him. The summers when it was easier if he stayed away instead of popping home so as not to disrupt the family's routine. Being with his wife and children and obliging autograph hunters, only for his little girl to look at him and ask why these people constantly had to interrupt their family time. It took a long time for him to break down some walls between he and his daughter, who was an adult before they had a conversation that led to a shift.

"She felt let down," he says. "I said, 'Look, we've got a choice – I can't change what's happened in the past, but we can change the future. I know you missed out, but I missed out as well, so we've just got to get over it and get on with it'.

"Thankfully, we've been able to."

After Martin's death, Judy encouraged Greg to open up emotionally, allowing him to build more open relationships with his kids than he'd had with his father. He had "man-to-man talks" with his two sons from a young age, which succeeded in bringing them closer together in the same way the poolside talk in Kenmore had with he and Martin. There were hugs, too, the physical connection a tangible expression of the warmth they developed.

"I don't know whether I've achieved that quite so well with our daughter," he adds. "But that's also part of the way she dealt with me being absent so much in the early days."

***

Walk around Chappell's Brisbane home and you wouldn't know he had played cricket, let alone become an icon of the sport. He has no use for the accoutrements of former glories. His view is this: why languish or luxuriate in the past when you can live life in the present? His grandfather, Vic Richardson, who also captained the country, perhaps planted that notion in an impressionable young mind. In Richardson's grand Adelaide home, the only hint of his exploits could be found in the Australia sweater and blazer lining the dog kennel. Only once did Chappell manage to convince his grandfather to bowl him a few balls on the pitch out the back, among the fruit trees and the vegetable gardens on the block beside the house itself. It was a Sunday morning, and he was four years old, yet still he recalls it now. Later, when Chappell was playing cricket at school, he would see a black Dodge pulled over on the main road running adjacent to the oval. Richardson was keeping tabs on his batting, but from a distance, for fear of stealing the limelight from his grandson.

Decades later, the story was the same, though Chappell was cast in a different role. His eldest boy was playing school cricket in Brisbane. He later joined the Air Force straight out of school but at the time he was a promising allrounder. Greg used to watch him from a hidden vantage point – behind some bushes, or on the far side of the field, away from the crowds – for the same reasons as his grandfather. Not until a teacher advised him to read his son's latest essay did he understand there was a problem.

"It was along the lines of: Why doesn't Dad come and watch me play cricket?" Chappell remembers. "He was probably 15 at the time.

"It gave us a chance to start the conversation, and clear the air."

Image Id: 1B0B2B7E55AD4C6EA1E7EB4FD6E7955A Image Caption: Chappell in action at the WACA in '82 // Getty

These are the subjects turning over in his head as August 7 looms. He has learned different techniques over the years to quieten his mind, to usher one thought after the next in, and out. He believes in meditation, a form of which he has been doing since before he even knew the word. Completely emptying the mind, he believes, is not something even the Buddhist monks achieve. Instead, it is about management. He finds pleasure in golf, which he plays once or twice a week. The competition within his regular playing group is – invariably – healthy. For Chappell, it is a drug to sate his addictive personality. His handicap went as low as four, and these days sits a little over six. It is an outlet for stress and competitiveness. When he doesn't play, he notices the tension building. 

"I'd be lost without it," he says. "I'd love to sit down and paint, but it doesn't do it for me."

During his cricket days, Chappell would lie on a massage table and reflect on the innings he had just played. He famously split his time in the middle into three different stages of concentration, culminating in tiny snippets of 'fierce focus'. He figured the less time he had to be in a peak state of concentration, the longer it would be until he made a mistake. As he faced up, he would clear his mind of everything but the ball, trusting instinct to let his body do what it needed. The game became overwhelmingly mental for him. He applies a similar theory to golf.

"The conscious mind is big picture: see the ball and hit it," he says. "The subconscious mind runs the program. If I've had a bad day, I don't get upset about my score, I get upset about how many times I have to learn the same thing.

"Concentration is nothing more than focusing on what's important in the moment."

***

Of course, he hasn't pushed all the past to the back of his mind. There are recollections from myriad times and places. Riots in Trinidad during the World Series Cricket days, with beer and rum bottles raining onto the field. Forgetting his shoes on his wedding day, and having to squeeze his feet into a borrowed pair of size eights. Late-night arguments between his father and Ian. The constant respiratory tract infections and the Bell's palsy diagnosis he refused to let blight his career. Listening with Judy to their favourite Billy Joel song, And so it goes.

Chappell is not one to pine for the good old days but he does see and hear things in cricket that concern him. He thinks the young person's habit of picking up their mobile phone as soon as they wake in the morning is unhealthy. People should check in with themselves, he says, before checking out the rest of the world. In the periods in his life when he was performing at his optimum, his first step each day was to ensure his mindset was positive and focused.

"When I've done that, life has made sense," he says. "When I haven't, life's a bitch."

He sees cricketers distracted by social media, or the constant bombardments they receive from various quarters within the artificial bubble of professional sports. He hears talk about getting what they can out of the game while they can. In his own world, he has always been aware of that balance; whenever he leaves cricket, he wants to do so having given the game as much as he knows it has given him. He shuffles uncomfortably when asked what he would like his legacy to be, perhaps a little off-put by the assumption he will leave one. Ultimately, his answer is simple.

"Someone who cared for the game," he says.

He considers the question more deeply. He thinks about the way he and his teammates loved and respected the game. They viewed it as their responsibility to take what they had inherited from the greats of bygone eras and leave it in better shape. He wonders if, in the maelstrom of full-time cricket – and the commitments and pressures and privileges it entails – that perspective has been lost.

"They're all brands," he says. "Their managers want them on social media to do this and that.

"Sometimes I hear conversations that worry me."

Chappell is a human link between Australian cricket and its past. He knows history has a habit of repeating itself. If he can help avoid the same mistakes being made, or worse still, "the baby being thrown out with the bathwater" as concepts and trends evolve, he will have paid another penny in his cricketing debt.

In the office nearest to him sits Troy Cooley, head coach of the national performance program and a man with whom Chappell has developed a close affinity over the past decade. Cooley, who in another life was the mastermind behind England's epic 2005 Ashes triumph, is channeling his focus on this country's top young prospects. He jokes that Chappell tolerates him, just as he tolerates Chappell's quirks.

"When I first met him I thought he was a grumpy old bastard – single-minded, pig-headed and wouldn't listen," Cooley says, laughing. "And I was a young whipper-snapper who thought he knew everything."

Chappell often wanders into Cooley's office and the pair shares conversations on cricket and life (with Chappell, Cooley says, it is impossible not to intertwine the subjects). On many occasions over the years, they have done the same over a glass of red wine. Chappell has a couple of boxes stashed at home and prefers something from his home state (a Rockford Basket Press Shiraz tops his current hit-list). Between them they will be influential in fostering the development of the next group of elite players in Australian cricket. Cooley has no doubt what keeps Chappell coming to work.

"He's turning up because he wants to see cricket survive," he says. "Some of the stuff coming into cricket is going to challenge the sport. But it's going to survive if we can take the good things from the past and blend it with the future.

"He's crucial in that."

***

From a white coffee mug, he takes a sip of water. His thoughts return to Leak Avenue, and a family barbecue when he was 15. He noticed Vic had disappeared, and with him, Ian. He found them in the loungeroom, Vic in an armchair, Ian on the floor, peppering his grandfather with questions about players, matches, venues. More than half a century on, it's easy to picture Greg in the same scene, holding court with his own grandchildren. A close friend describes him as a natural storyteller, a narrator even, to decades of Australian cricket. Already, he shares his knowledge with the brightest up-and-coming players in the country.

"Some of their grandfathers have obviously told them that I played cricket once," he says, with a trace of a grin.

Most of the lessons, though, came from his father. In their backyard, Martin would aim the ball – a proper cricket ball – back of a length, where a ridge would ensure unpredictable bounce, and the young brothers had to react accordingly. It was the beginnings of three Test cricketers.

"I'd loved to have talked to Dad about what he understood when he was teaching us as kids," Chappell reflects. "My intuition tells me that he knew a lot; he couldn't have got so much right by accident."

As Chappell moved into his teens, he didn't always listen to Martin, and he knows it is the same for the elite young cricketers in his care today. He tries to apply a fatherly touch at times, to lend words or encouragement as well as simply offering instructions; he sees the role of coach as possessing similar qualities to that of parenting, particularly with younger players.

"Our father was a very big part of our cricket life as well as our life," he says. "But you get to be around 13 or 14 and you think you know it all and your father doesn't know very much. And I'm sure some of these young guys think the same things when I'm talking: Silly old bugger, what do you know?

"But hopefully, down the track, the light goes on."

Chappell's public face portrays him as a serious individual, which could well be its intention. He is a well-liked, friendly figure within his office, while those close to him describe a generous, garrulous man with a caustic sense of humour. Former teammates remember him as a captain who could both celebrate wins with the boys, and pull them sharply into line.

Allan Border tells the story of Australia's first match in New Zealand following the 'Underarm Incident' of the previous year. Chappell had been the face of the controversy, having directed his brother Trevor to bowl underarm to avoid a tied match. At a heaving, jam-packed Eden Park 12 months later, spectators turned up in lawn bowls outfits, smuggled in bowling balls and poured scorn on the Australians. Chappell responded with a rapid century in pursuit of 241 to win, but he couldn't find a batting partner to stick with him.

"He and I were in the middle," remembers Border, "and I've played this silly shot trying to be the hero, and got caught. We lost the game soon after.

"Greg came into the dressing room, and as he was unbuckling his pads, I got an almighty spray. He left me in no uncertain terms as to what he thought of my dismissal.

"That happened rarely, but who it was didn't matter – if he thought you'd done the wrong thing, you'd cop it."

Image Id: 2F04F7B54B6E44288C8C73D4B0369A6F Image Caption: With former teammate Allan Border in 2005 // Getty

Another ex-teammate recalls Chappell during a Sheffield Shield match, whispering timely wisecracks in the ears of NSW quicks Len Pascoe and Geoff Lawson to distract them from their lengths. There are countless stories like these, of a man who had mastered the mental side of the game recognising how to use it against his opponents. Listening to him talk cricket – the issues he sees within the system, the factors that separate first-class cricketers from international players – is an insight into a higher plane of knowledge.

When he turned his hand to coaching, he grew frustrated at his inability to make meaningful strategic contributions during a match. Cricket, he believes, remains a captain's game – even in this age of coaching – because once the team is on the field, the coach's role ends. "There's so much information you gain on the field just by looking into the eyes of your mates, or your opponents," he says. "You can't see that from 100 metres away."

To combat the frustration he would find a player he trusted to relay an accurate picture of proceedings in the middle. When he was in charge of the Indian team (which he describes as "like touring with The Beatles") a young MS Dhoni was that man.

"You could sit down with Dhoni for five minutes and he'd just give you a snapshot of the whole thing," he remembers. "It was very early in his career but he was a very impressive young fella – he was always going to be captain of India, you could tell just by sitting with him and talking cricket."

Image Id: 73B334BBA502445EAC23F9B36E613F25 Image Caption: Flanked by (L) Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, 2006 // Getty

The India experience was also a stark snapshot of the scrutiny surrounding contemporary international cricket. Chappell understands that selections are a central act in that drama, which places his position in a more intense spotlight than ever. In the 1980s, they could afford to give Steve Waugh 27 Tests before he scored a century. They knew he could play, so they gave him latitude to show it.

"That was a very different world," he says. "We would never be allowed to do that now."

***

On a blue-skied winter morning, Chappell is in the gym on level one of the National Cricket Centre. This is how he begins most work days, sweating through some light weights and pull-ups and similar core strength activities. If he isn't working, he will walk; he tries to complete some form of exercise every day, because it helps put his mind in equilibrium. He has been extreme with his lifestyle choices at different stages. At one point he went vegan for 13 years. The root cause was the death of his father, whose heart attack, Chappell later established, came down to poor health as opposed to any genetic issue. He is about to be six years older than Martin was when he passed. The lessons in between have taught him that – with the possible exception of golf – things are best in moderation.

So much of his past is intertwined with cricket. Batting left-handed in the backyard to be like Neil Harvey. The newspaper clipping that was mailed to him by his father, which led to him reevaluating everything he knew about batting. The influences of South Africans Richards and Pollock, and West Indians Sobers and Kanhai. Conversations with Tendulkar about batting. In time, he even worked out the greatest magic trick of all: there is no magic. Even talent is overrated when compared with character and desire.

"Success in sport – especially as a batsman in cricket – is a test in how well you deal with failure," he says.

Part of Chappell's need to walk away from all things cricket had been a growing urge to prove something to himself. He had read a lot of books about success and successful people, even attending conferences on the subject. He had to show himself that his ability did not begin and end with the sport he had always known.

"I felt like I wanted to achieve something outside of cricket," he says.

It was an itch he scratched, as part of a successful sports marketing company, while other business ventures – in life insurance, primarily – proved fruitful as well. But nothing satisfied him like cricket. He says he never expected to return to the fold, but when he took on the South Australia head coach job in 1998, being back felt right.

"One thing about a sporting career is, you know exactly where you stand at any given moment," he says. "You don't necessarily get that in other careers."

His mind returns to the present, and the challenge facing Australian cricket. He has watched the game move in cycles, Australian cricket hit peaks and troughs. It reminds him of something his grandfather, Vic Richardson, used to say: There's nothing new in cricket – everything's been tried before. Even field placings are like men's suits – hang on to them long enough, they'll be back in fashion.

"I've seen that happen throughout my lifetime," he says.

He wants success for Australia's next generation. Despite his misgivings, these players provide a mirror to his younger self in their ambition and drive. It is a brave new world, but much remains from half a century ago. Chappell knows better than anyone that young egos will clash with old establishment types. He has been both. But his heart pumps the blood of a cricketer.

"I love seeing these young blokes who are as passionate about the game now as I was 50 years ago," he says. "That gives me a buzz."

The way he decided to 'celebrate' his 70th says a lot about the man he is: laying down side by side with a group of well-known Australian sportspeople on the Sydney Cricket Ground, and sleeping through a wintry night to raise money for youth homelessness. His charity, The Chappell Foundation, is behind the initiative, and has raised more than $400,000 in its brief existence. It is a testament to Chappell's altruism that it has been so successful in such a short space of time. The origin of the concept was his early morning exercise routine in Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens, when he remembers being staggered by the sight of so many homeless. He threw himself into making a change.

"He's a loving man," says Cooley. "He's got a rough exterior but you don't have to scratch very deep to get down to who he is, and that's someone who really cares."

***

Chappell is already living his future. He showed his grandson the parallels between chess and cricket as a means of convincing him the merits of the latter. They'll sometimes catch a game together at the Gabba, and more regularly he will drive him to taekwondo lessons. He is conscious of praising his grandson and 10-year-old granddaughter when the opportunity arises. A fortnight ago, he was in Adelaide for his youngest son's graduation ceremony from his electrician course. It is not difficult to draw a line between all this and the lost early years with his children. He knows he won't get those times back, so instead he is continuing to apply the learnings.

"Life's upside down in a lot of ways," he says, pondering then and now. "When you're a young parent, it's the busiest time of your life."

He and Judy are hopeful of more grandchildren, and they would like to be near an airport so they can visit family in Adelaide and Melbourne, friends and – for Greg – favourite golf courses. Where they end up might be the result of a compromise; Judy finds the Brisbane summers harsh, while Greg is not enamoured by the cooler climes. Chappell has grown used to a peripatetic life, seeing himself as something of a gypsy. In April, he took a bucket-list trip to Augusta for the US Masters. He was in awe of the way the world's best golfers went about their business. He had access to the famed clubhouse, and had a conversation with Nick Faldo, whom he once partnered in a Pro-Am. He relished the holiday and, in a similar way, values his job for the opportunities it affords him to continue making his way around the country, returning to favourite haunts and visiting old mates. When he says he would like to finish up near a beach, you get the sense he's being as close to wistful as he gets.

"It's nice to have a base and some normalness around your life, but I don't survive long in that frame of mind," he says. "I don't think I'm going to stop travelling entirely."

Image Id: C1D930D8667347F18FF1305B77CBA3E7 Image Caption: At the MCG as part of the Centenary Test celebrations // Getty

During Chappell's cricket career, Ian told him he would know when the time was right to retire. And so it proved. He bowed out in glorious style, with a match-winning hundred, Australia's runs record and the Test catches world record. In the shadow of the Ladies and Members Stands at the SCG, with Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh for company, he exited to an adoring crowd.

When it happens this time, there will be no friends or fanfare, not if Chappell has anything to do with it. He just hopes he'll know when the moment is right. He laughs to himself, quietly.

"One day, there'll come a time when they say, 'that's enough', or I'll say, 'that's enough'," he says. "Hopefully, I'll know when that is before they do."

In a year from now, Ian has organised a get-together on the Gold Coast for the extended Chappell clan. The family reunion will mark the centenary of Martin's birth. Greg is enthused by the prospect of the younger Chappell generations spending some time together, particularly the grandkids, who live in separate states. Doubtless he, Ian and Trevor will reflect on their own childhoods at some point as well, reliving the backyard battles – and the influence of their father – that made three Test cricketers. For Greg, there will be a telling difference between Leak Avenue and the Gold Coast, made plain by the way he welcomes and farewells his boys.

"Whenever we meet, whenever we part, it's with a hug," he says. "It's a close bond."

***

In Toowoomba, almost two hours west of Brisbane, Chappell's daughter-in-law is backstage at a dance eisteddfod, hurriedly adding the finishing touches to her daughter's costume. A host of other 10-year-old girls buzz around them, giddy with excitement. An audience of siblings and parents, auntys, uncles and grandparents sits with hushed expectation. Waiting in the wings, hidden behind a black curtain, is Australia's best batsman since Bradman. Today, he is the music man. He waits nervously, and the lights go on.

"I had to be ready to hit the button and get the music going at the right time," Chappell says, half-grinning. "And I loved it – it was fantastic."

It was the smallest involvement and a world away from what he has known, but the experience was cathartic. Whenever he came home during his playing days, Chappell struggled to truly invest in family time because his mind was elsewhere. Cricket, he knows, will always be a part of him; it is how he is wired. But he has found a balance, and retirement – whenever it comes – will bring with it the promise of more time. Next year, he and Judy are taking a trip to England as a joint 70th birthday celebration. It will be just the two of them. He can already hear the music. And so it goes.