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Adelaide Oval, March 10th 1980
Prologue South Australia are playing Victoria in the Sheffield Shield final. It’s the last day and players have gone to lunch.
Victoria had scored 365/5 (d) and 182/6 (d). South Australia had scored 304 in the first innings and were needing 243 to win. At lunch SA has scored around 100 runs, with three wickets down; still in with a chance.
Act 1 My memory is hazy but I do know that Ian Chappell was already out (32) and sitting in the grandstand when the Victoria Coach Dick Telford passed him on the way to get something to eat. As he passed Chappell he suggested to him that the game was still in the balance. To which Chappell concurred.
Act 2 Telford came out from lunch 10 minutes or so after play had resumed by which time SA was down five wickets for less than 120.
Telford passed Chappell and said, ‘Not looking so good now Ian’, to which Chappell replied in his characteristically sardonic manner, You’re not fucken wrong.’
South Australia collapsed for 150.
I was with a friend Graham Dodd and we went up to our mentor, the SA coach Howard Mutton and shared our commiserations. In a reflective mood all he had to say was, ‘Winners can laugh and losers can please themselves.’
The Ian Chappell part of the story was related to me by Dick Telford.
John Miller
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