Calum Henderson on the infamous under arm bowl issue - now the focus of a documentary.
I never thought I'd say this, but here goes: I feel a bit sorry for Greg Chappell.
Yes, the former Australian cricket captain, Greg Chappell, who in 1981 instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball of a game against New Zealand along the ground, an act of such astonishingly bad sportsmanship and inexplicable cowardice it's been ingrained in our cultural memory as a symbol of all that's wrong with Australia and Australians ever since. It's just, after watching the Prime documentary, Underarm, last week, I feel like it's possible we might have lost a little bit of perspective.
I admit I'm part of the problem. The underarm incident happened before I was born, a good decade before I started watching cricket and yet, the prospect of an hour-long documentary about it still had me rubbing my hands together with pure glee. With Eric Young's authoritative narration, innovative use of Scanlens trading cards and an overall tone that wouldn't have felt out of place between a JFK assassination special and a Hitler conspiracy doco on the History Channel, it didn't disappoint.
All the main players from both sides were involved – imagine the phone calls the producers must have had to make to Greg and Trevor Chappell. Between them and the likes of Ian Smith, Bruce Edgar and Brian McKechnie, the events of the day were recounted in vivid, absorbing detail. This included the game's often overlooked preliminary controversy: Martin Snedden's disallowed miracle catch.