by Arunabha Sengupta
When he walked out onto the Oval balcony on that August evening, Percy Chapman was acclaimed ‘like a young Caesar’.
Six feet three inches tall, twelve stone, with a mass of curly blond hair, his cherubic features radiating a debonair gaiety as he stood in the summer evening sun, he had just won his first Test match as captain, and thereby The Ashes. Then the youngest England captain to lead at home, 25 years and 345 days when the Test started. Thrust into the job after the infamous axing of Arthur Carr, he had led the team, including old pros like Jack Hobbs and Wilfred Rhodes, with sterling confidence, banking on his own judgement rather than the advice of his many elders.
When he took his team to Australia for the 1928-29 series, a dock worker at Fremantle shouted, “Good luck, Chapman. Have you brought the Ashes with you?”
To that he answered, “Yes, I’ll show them to you on the way back.”
England did win the first four Tests of the series. Chapman did not play the final Test, which they lost.
When the third Test was over, Plum Warner wrote: “AFP Chapman is a young man but he has already had two moments in his life which he will never forget, even when that curly head of his is white with the snows of time.” He meant the two Ashes winning moments of course.
Chapman ended up leading England 17 times, winning 9 and losing just 2. That makes him one of the most successful captains of all time. John Marchant, who chronicled the 1926 Oval Test in book form, maintained that he was one of the finest captains of all time.
When Arthur Gilligan listed 15 qualities one should have as captain —quite arbitrary and whimsical ones I daresay— he added that the only person to possess all of them in his eyes was Percy Chapman, the ‘Happy Warrior’.
He remains one of the most successful captains ever.
Of course, he was an old school amateur. Cambridge man, sparkling approach to the game, and thereby magnificent in patches and perennially inconsistent. His left-handed batting was breathtaking to watch when he made runs, especially when he drove through the covers. And while his batting was more miss than hit, his fielding was electric throughout his career.
In the famous 1930 Test at Lord’s, that England lost after scoring 400 on the first day, he scored 121 effervescent runs in two and a half hours with three sixes, and in both innings caught Bradman with catches that are still spoken of. The second was at point off a hit that went so quickly that some wondered how anyone saw the ball to qualify it as a catch. [This tale was documented by Cardus, and it seems JM Barrie was the one doing the wondering. So, it has to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. However, the catch was magnificent.]
Bert Oldfield was of the opinion that Chapman was the greatest all-round fielder he had seen. Mind you, he had seen a lot of Wally Hammond.
“My own idea of an ideal cricket match,” said Robertson-Glasgow, “is to bowl on a fast pitch with damp on top and to have Chapman, as captain, in the gully.”
However, as he got to his late twenties, his weight kept increasing. “We can’t get all of Mr Chapman in the camera,” said Jack Hobbs. His heavy drinking did not really help. He played his last Test cricket at 30, and after the age of 28 did not enjoy a summer in which he averaged more than 30.
Chapman scored 925 runs at 28.90 in 26 Tests.
He faded away silently from the cricketing scene, and in a rather sorrowful way from life—divorced, plagued by depression, alcoholism and depression. Sad way for the most cheerful of cricketers to depart.
Percy Chapman was born on 3 Sep 1900.