“I remember the day when I knew I’d had enough of playing cricket,” he stated. “I looked at the clock and it was five past 11 on a day of play and I thought, ‘S**t, if you’re clock-watching at that time, I have to go’.
“So with regards to commentary, I’ve been desirous about it. I had a minor stroke a couple of years again and I received off fortunate. But it simply makes every part tougher. And I simply thought with all of the journey and, you realize, strolling upstairs and issues like that, it is all simply going to get tougher.
“Then I read what Rabbits [legendary rugby league commentator Ray Warren] said with retirement and it really struck home when I read the bit where he said, ‘you’re always one sentence closer to making a mistake’.”
Chappell entered the commentary field in direction of the tip of a taking part in career of 75 Test matches – 30 of them as captain – and have become a part of a staff of distinctive voices that backgrounded Channel Nine’s broadcasts of Australian cricket for greater than three many years, alongside Richie Benaud, Bill Lawry and Tony Greig.
Channel Nine and Chappell loved an extended relationship, however not one with out the occasional fraught second.
“Kerry [Packer, the media mogul who owned Channel Nine] wanted to sack me a couple of times,” Chappell stated. “He used to get the s***s about one-day cricket, because that was his baby. And I might have said something about one-day cricket. With Kerry it was just like a storm – you’d let it blow over till the next one came.”
When requested how he want to be remembered as a commentator, Chappell replied: “It’s up to other people to decide what they think of me and some will think I’ve been all right. Some will think I’ve been a pr**k. That doesn’t bother me one bit.”