The pricklier issues of Chappell’ s mature career give the book its sting. The second half, which considers test captaincy, changes in the game, World Series Cricket, the ‘underarm incident’, Kim Hughes, and other familiar vibrations in recent cricket, is less damagingly affected by obvious contrivances and ploys in the writing than is the worship of Greg, the suburban hero in the earlier chapters, though even the later controversies are not free of sensationalism or mawkishness.

By professionalism, McGregor means playing to succeed and to win, at virtually all costs (not playing for money, which is a related aspect of commercialism). The old class distinction between ‘gentlemen and players’ is invoked, players endorsed. As batsman, captain and businessman, Chappell is observed thoroughly and plausibly, with the right blend of factual detail and his own impressions, as the developing professional, the man who learns concentration, plan and application, adjustment of his ‘mental set’.

The most notorious controversy in Chappell’s career, the ‘underarm incident’, is in McGregor’s interpretation a consummate example of professional behaviour. It is splendidly evoked, in a way which fuses the event and the debate: McGregor shifts panoramically and in close amongst a number of representative participants, including us, and allows the immediacy of their responses to generate the arguments and the excitement of the controversy. I disagree frequently with McGregor’s emphases and judgements, but at his best his comprehensive perceptions, and his awareness of an ambience, at least invite a Voltairean tolerance. He defends Chappell's ‘underarm’ decision, ultimately, on the, grounds that it achieved an urgently needed rest for the Australian team before the forthcoming ‘proper’ cricket test against India. The captain’s ‘professionalism’ had proved equal to the demands of modem cricket, whereas the ACB’s administrators had not. If they had been thorough, they would have outlawed the underarm delivery as had been done in England. That seems to me to be digging in too stubbornly for Chappell, and for an extreme. Even from the purely ‘professional’ point of view, as an exploitation of inadequate rules, the underarm move failed – or ‘succeeded’ only in a pyrrhic way. It brought no real rest before the India test and was an intense distraction to the captain’s and the team’s preparation. To be hardnosed was to be short-sighted. And if, through all extremes, the rules are to be professionally exploited, why did Chappell not bowl underarm for the entire last over, or indeed throughout the innings?

McGregor’s examination of the effects of commercialism is absorbing and chilling. What is disturbing is not so much the decision of Chappell and his cricketing contemporaries to capitalise (‘like any other ‘capitalist’ the argument would run) on their professional talents; the indications of how comprehensively Packer’s players disliked their job, how fully they knew that the ‘supertests’ were ballyhoo, how meekly they acquiesced in Packer’s commercialisation process, and how simply one man’s money ruled players, consumers and the game are the real worry. McGregor is quick to censure the Australian Cricket Board administrators, but they are shown as merely blundering angels by comparison and so far as the responsible use of power was concerned. However, he doesn’t say that.

The book impressively defines Chappell’s relationship with particular cricketers and administrators.

Although McGregor is generally sensitive and informative on Hughes and Chappell, Hughes is allowed to be branded by a sort of unanimous players’ whisper as an incompetent captain. No evidence or sufficient discussion is supplied to support the controversial charge. Quite early in the book Chappell has himself retrospectively commented concerning the behaviour of the 1970 England team towards Illingworth’s captaincy: ‘There seemed to be two or three blokes who thought they would be a better captain than the bloke doing it …  Which is something we have never had in Australia … well, that’s not entirely true’. Interesting.

This is an ‘authorised biography’. In such books the horse’s mouth is at the writer’s ear. The reader may receive informed, direct and authentic confidences, impressions, and new information; but he will inevitably suspect that some soothing and grooming and offers of sugar may be necessary to keep the beast co-operative. If McGregor is occasionally critical of Chappell, it is within the context of a general intimacy and support. The approach works for Blanche d’Alpuget on Bob Hawke, and there are numerous parallels between that book and this ‘authorised’ account of a ‘prime-minister of cricket’, whose publicly exposed and publicly created selves have gained living room familiarity over the same period. Unfortunately, McGregor gets enthusiastically sentimental. He dissolves into gee-whiz naivete and blandness; and the more he attempts to lionise, or to contrive a spurious fascination for each event in the ‘exciting story’, the further he unintentionally demeans his subject. All the necessary information is properly included: the Chappell family, the backyard, schools, the family’s feud with Bradman, the anxieties and deprivations of Judy Chappell. And much is well left: there is no ball-by-ball boredom in the recounting of innings and matches. But Chappell himself becomes the victim of McGregor’s style. For example, the young cricketer’s reflections in 1969 on his future when, during a rain-interrupted game, he observes a group of futile old professionals waiting in the dressing room, are scarcely given proper credit by this:

What did Greg have? An excellent onside and improving off-side technique, a safe pair of hands and a tidy bowling arm. ‘I thought, “Jeez when you boil it all down, cricket’s good fun, but it’s not the way you want to live your life”’.

Soon after, McGregor allows Greg to be smitten by an intellectual thunderclap: ‘“What I’d really like to do is to represent Australia”, he thought.’ Good thinking, Greg! It’s a mixture. If you can survive the worst of this conscientious, enthusiastic book, you will relish the best.