The second of three brothers to play Test cricket, Chappell was the pre-eminent Australian batsman of his time who allied elegant stroke making to fierce concentration.

An exceptional all round player who bowled medium pace and, at his retirement, held the world record for the most catches in Test cricket,[1] Chappell's career straddled two eras as the game moved toward a greater level of professionalism after the WSC schism.

The highlight of Chappell's season was a brilliant 154 against Western Australia, but his continuing preference for leg side shots was seen as a weakness if he wanted to make Test cricket.

During a brief dressing room encounter with the great Don Bradman, then a state and national selector, Chappell was advised to change his grip on the bat in order to improve his off-side play.

The green pitches in England encouraged him to experiment with seam-up medium pace, which produced immediate results: he finished with 71 wickets for Somerset, including 7 for 40 against Yorkshire at Leeds in 1969.

Scoring 519 runs at 57.70, he was the dominant batsman of the tour and with the Test team failing in South Africa,[12] he only needed a solid start to the next season to force his way in to play against England in the 1970–71 Ashes Series.

In a match that would be remembered for Bob Massie's remarkable 16-wicket haul, Chappell's masterful 131 in Australia's first innings was a key component in squaring the series.

On the subsequent trip to the West Indies, he achieved the rare feat of scoring a thousand runs on a Caribbean tour, which included 106 in the Test at Bridgetown, Barbados.

In recognition of his outstanding 1972 Ashes tour, Chappell was named, along with fellow Australians Bob Massie, Dennis Lillee and Keith Stackpole, as one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 1973.

This brought a lucrative offer to move to Brisbane and captain the Queensland side, as a precursor to taking over the Australian captaincy when Ian decided to retire.

Appointed as Australian captain, Chappell began with a century in each innings to win the first Test against the West Indies in his adopted home town of Brisbane.

Chappell was able to parlay his position into a reasonable income with his Queensland contract and personal endorsements, but he still needed to develop business interests in life insurance outside the game.

Australia received much criticism for defensive play during a drawn series with Pakistan, but Chappell's form was faultless, and he scored 121 and 67 in the only Test victory.

But the most significant occurrence of this match occurred off-field: Chappell was approached to sign with a proposed break away competition, later to be known as World Series Cricket (WSC).

Some of his players felt that he struggled to cope with the pressure of captaincy during the tense England run chase on the final day,[25] when Australia won a dramatic victory, due to by a marathon bowling spell from Dennis Lillee.

[28] Tour officials and administrators back home questioned his loyalty, journalists were constantly looking for comment, while non-WSC players in the squad accused him of bias in team selections.

[29] Leading an inexperienced team in often inclement weather sapped his confidence,[30] while the English bowlers, knowing that he was the key wicket, constantly put him under pressure.

The English writer and commentator John Arlott wrote[35] of him in 1977:He was – indeed, is – one of the three finest batsmen in the world; probably the best onside player of modern times; quick in reaction, superbly poised, an immaculate stylist.Chappell was happy for brother Ian to captain the WSC Australian team, which allowed him to concentrate on his batting.

The Australians struggled against the array of talented players assembled to represent the West Indian and World teams, and the emphasis on fast bowling destroyed the confidence of many batsmen, who took to wearing helmets for safety.

Doctors and family advised him to miss the trip, but Chappell was determined to go and utilise a modified technique he had devised for facing the relentless fast bowling.

[36] In quick succession, he peeled off 45 and 90 in Barbados, 7 and 150 in Trinidad, 113 in Guyana and finished his WSC career with 104 and 85 in Antigua, all scored against an attack of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Joel Garner on their home wickets.

[41] Despite protesting the strenuous nature of the players' workload in this new era, Chappell found himself leading the team to Pakistan two weeks after the end of the Australian season.

Chappell experienced his only extended run of poor form during the 1981–82 Australian season, which featured Test and One Day matches against the West Indies and Pakistan.

His batting exploits in ODIs were not quite of the same magnitude as his Test match career, but he did hold the Australian record single-innings score (138 not against New Zealand in 1980[47]) for more than ten years.

At this point, Greg Chappell intervened, told his brother to deliver the ball along the ground (i.e. underarm) and he then informed the umpire to let the batsman know of the change of bowling style.

Ganguly was later dropped from the Indian cricket team by the selectors on the grounds of poor form, but many in the media suggested his omission was influenced by the previous row with Chappell.

His rift with India's captain Sourav Ganguly and poor performances of the team at the 2007 World Cup made Chappell a dark figure in the history of Indian Cricket.

He handed debuts to Sreesanth, Munaf Patel and Suresh Raina, who were all part of India's squad in the successful 2011 World Cup campaign.

R. P. Singh, who was India's top wicket taker with 12 scalps in their successful campaign for the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007,[64] and Robin Uthappa, another member of the winning squad, were also handed their debuts by Chappell.

During the early part of his career, since being a cricketer was not yet a full-time profession, Chappell worked in a variety of jobs, including at a life assurance firm, an oil company, and as a promotions officer with Coca-Cola bottlers in Adelaide.