Australian cricket legend Greg Chappell has revealed his beloved baggy green has gone missing.
Speaking on the Cricket Et Al podcast, the 76-year-old said the prized possession had mysteriously disappeared from storage, but didn’t go as far as saying it had been stolen.
Chappell said he put his baggy green in storage ten years ago but realised it wasn’t there when he cleared it out to move to Adelaide.
“We had stuff in storage for about 10 years or so, and when we moved back to Adelaide we brought everything out of storage and I was expecting to find that baggy green cap, but it didn’t appear,” Chappell told journalists Peter Lalor and Gideon Haigh on Cricket Et Al.
“I don’t know what happened to it. I wouldn’t like to cast aspersions, but it went into storage, but it doesn’t seem to have come out.
“I don’t surround myself with my cricket memorabilia … (but) I’m a little bit disappointed.”
Australian cricket great Greg Chappell in 1977.
Chappell received more than one baggy green during his career. News Corp reports the baggy green he gifted to England’s Geoffrey Boycott sold at auction four years ago for $15,000.
But the baggy green he did hold on to is now missing.
Chappell is considered one of Australia’s greatest ever batsmen — scoring 24 centuries across 87 Test matches during the 1970s and 80s.
The Chappell brothers — Greg, Ian and Trevor — all played for Australia during that period.
Along with fast bowler Dennis Lillee and wicketkeeper Rod Marsh, Chappell was part of an iconic trio that defected to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s.
But unlike Lillee and Marsh, Chappell didn’t receive a fundraising testimonial at the end of his career to help set him up after retiring from cricket.
He had fallen on hard times and last year a GoFundMe raised more than $100,000.
Iconic Australian cricketers Rod Marsh, Greg Chappell and Dennis Lillee. (Photo by Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)
Greg Chappell is a doyen of Australian cricket.
“I’m not on the bones of my a**e,” Chappell told News Corp last year.
“I certainly don’t want it to sound like we’re in desperate straits, because we’re not – but we’re not living in luxury either.
“I think most people assume that because we played cricket that we are all living in the lap of luxury. While I’m certainly not crying poor, we’re not reaping in the benefits that today’s players are.”
It comes after David Warner’s baggy green saga last summer, which saw the retiring opener put out a video pleading for the cap to be returned, only for it to turn up days later midway through the SCG New Year’s Test.
Warner’s baggy green was simply misplaced — and not discovered in an extensive search of the team hotel.
The bag in question was always with the rest of the team’s luggage in the team’s room at their Sydney hotel. A total of 64 bags made the trip from Melbourne to Sydney.
Pat Cummins said after Australia wrapped up a 3-0 series sweep against Pakistan: “It’s probably not my story to tell. Maybe talk to Davey.”
David Warner’s baggy green was lost, then found last summer. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Warner then strolled into the post-match press conference, with the baggy green safely atop his head, and suggested questions should be asked of the team’s security.
“You’re going to have to ask security. I wish I’d played a prank like that,” he said.
There has been some speculation Warner’s cap went missing as part of a team prank, but his wife Candice wouldn’t throw anyone under the bus.
A doyen of Australian cricket, Chappell has developed a reputation as one of the sharpest identifiers of talent in the country since retiring from playing.
He famously described Cameron Green as the best cricketer he had seen since Ricky Ponting shortly before the West Australian all-rounder was picked to make his Test debut.
Chappell has also been a selector of the national side and a member of the Australian Cricket Board.
He also runs the Chappell Foundation, which raises funds for homelessness charities.
