BARRY NICHOLLS Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress

Barry Nicholls turns in a masterly review of the 1972 Ashes series, arguing that Australia’s tour of England reflected societal change.

Test series have an inbuilt structure, and Nicholls builds on that in his opening chapter with a discussion of the end of the previous Ashes series in Australia in 1970-71 when Chappell supplanted the conservative, defensive Bill Lawry as captain in the final match and led his country against a Rest of the World team the following summer. The second chapter comprises brief biographies of team members and the third the long preliminaries, including ten first-class matches, before the first Test. Then there is the series itself, the aftermath, and the legacy of the tour.

 In many ways Playing to Win is a book Nicholls was meant to write. In a talk to the Friends of the State Library of South Australia in October he spoke of Ian Chappell’s own account of the tour, Tigers Among the Lions, being the first book he ever read at around the age of ten. That was probably a small exaggeration, but for a boy obsessed with bats and balls. it, along with the vivid radio commentaries of John Arlott and Alan McGilvray, provided a spark as well as relevant personal experience that would be relived in this book, six years in the making.

Slow-cooked meals offer additional flavours, and similarly Nicholls’s thorough approach to his subject has benefits. By interviewing 13 of the tourists, talking with Mike Coward (a young journalist with Australian Associated Press in 1972), consulting newspapers, magazines and annuals of the day, and reading widely in tour accounts and player autobiographies and biographies, he draws on a range of viewpoints in mounting his arguments.

The tour was the last to run from April through to September, and consisted of 37 matches, 26 first-class. In bald statistics, the results of 11 wins, 10 draws and five losses from the first-class matches was not outstanding, although the numbers would certainly have been better if seven of the early games had not resulted in draws, mostly due to inclement weather. The tour was also the last to have eight matches programmed after the final Test, including (for the first time) three one-day limited-over games.

 The Test series was drawn 2-2 and so England retained the Ashes. England won the opening Test on a seaming pitch at Old Trafford; Australia the second at Lord’s, forever named ‘Massie’s Match’ – plus a little help from a Greg Chappell century. The third Test at Trent Bridge was drawn, the fourth at Headingley won by England in conditions made for left-arm orthodox spinner ‘Deadly’ Derek Underwood, and the fifth at The Oval won heroically by Australia after first innings hundreds by the Chappell brothers, and finally due to an unbroken fifth-wicket partnership of 71 by Paul Sheahan and Rod Marsh, which sealed victory.

Wisely, Nicholls doesn’t provide too much detail in his descriptions of the Tests, which can be found elsewhere in contemporary tour books and now more immediately on YouTube. Instead, he enthrals us by bringing to life forgotten moments, such as this from the first morning of the first match:

When Dennis Lillee, with splayed arms and wild hair, roared in from forty metres, it was to four slips and a gully. England started shakily in murky conditions when Boycott survived an LBW appeal from the second ball of the match. The Australians’ appeal reverberated around the stands, like the call of a newspaper seller entering a ghost town.

And a spell by David Colley from Lord’s that has otherwise been ignored:

Colley conceding just eight runs from seven blistering overs was crucial to Massie’s swinging wicket-taking show at the other end. Colley remembered it as the best he had ever bowled.

‘You have days when you bowl poorly and get six wickets. I wish the wickets had come that day at Lord’s.’ Colley was so quick that Marsh stepped a metre forward when Lillee came on to bowl. Ian Chappell thought the spell vital.

Australia’s win at The Oval was celebrated by thousands of British Afro-Caribbeans, as Nicholls recounts:

Fans banged on tin cans beating rhythms. Cricket became a rallying point to promote Caribbean independence, which was emerging from major political and social upheaval. It became important to watch England defeated, even if it was not by a West Indian side. In 1960, just three West Indian nations had achieved independence from European colonies; by the early 1980s it had grown to 16. As former West Indian paceman Colin Croft put it, ‘West Indians [who] had been born in colonial times but grew up in independent times … started thinking like West Indians and not like Englishmen living in the West Indies.’ The West Indian fans were well and truly behind Australia that summer.

The Australians were a good side getting better and, as Nicholls argues, ‘at a pivotal moment in cricket history’. But they were poorly recompensed, receiving just $2650 for their five months on tour, plus a share of $5358 each Test match for those who played, or around $500 per man. The relative pay of Australian teams had declined since Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles.

Dennis Lillee had taken 31 wickets and Bob Massie 23 at less than 18 runs apiece; Greg Chappell had made centuries at Lord’s and The Oval, averaged 48 in the Tests and 70 for the tour; vice-captain Keith Stackpole had made a century and five fifties in the Tests for an average of 54; Rod Marsh made a spirited 91 in a losing cause in the first Test, averaged 35 in the series and made 23 dismissals behind the stumps; Ross Edwards had weighed in with a big hundred when thrust into an opening role at short notice at Nottingham; Ashley Mallett had picked up ten wickets in two matches; and Ian Chappell made an important hundred at The Oval and led from the front at all times.

In Nicholls’s words, the summer ‘confirmed the reputations of Dennis Lillee, Greg Chappell and Rod Marsh’. Ian Chappell’s ‘attacking captaincy was vindicated and admired worldwide’, however, the growing frustration regarding match payments meant ‘the seed for future revolution had also been sown’.  

Stylishly written, Playing to Win is an absorbing account of a significant series and a critical contribution to cricket history.

Barry Nicholls Playing to Win: Australia and the 1972 Ashes Wakefield Press 2025 PB 216pp $34.95

Bernard Whimpress usually writes on sport and his most recent book is a new edition of On Our Selection: An alternative history of Australian Cricket available from Roger Page Cricket Books and www.lulu.com/spotlight/bernardwhimpress

You can buy Playing to Win from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

Tags: 1972 Ashes, Australian cricket team, Barry | Nicholls, Bill Lawry, cricket, English cricket team, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Rod Marsh, Test cricket