Adelaide: Former Indian cricket team coach Gregg Chappell didn’t have the best of the time with men in blue. It was rather a period filled with controversy in the nation’s cricket scenario with reports emerging about players falling out with him leading to his departure. Recently the former Aussie batter opened up about his coaching stint team India while questioning former skipper Sourav Ganguly’s dedication towards the game stating “ He didn’t particularly want to work hard” and his only intention was “to be in the team as captain, so that he could control things.”
However, according to him, it was Sourav’s choice to appoint the Aussie as the coaching role, “Ganguly was the one who approached me about coaching India. I had other approaches but I decided that since John Buchanan was coaching Australia… I would love to coach the most populous, fanatical cricket country in the world, and that opportunity came about because Sourav, who was the captain, made sure that I did.” added Chappell on a podcast with Cricket Life Stories.
Gregg Joined team India back in 2005 replacing the ever influential John Wright. After initial success, the team began to underperform especially in the 2006 ICC Champions Trophy at home. The situation though got worse when India were handed a shocking defeat by Bangladesh in the opening game of their 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup campaign before they were crashed out of the tournament after a defeat against Sri-Lanka in the final game group stages which lead to the Aussie’s resignation from the post.
Chappell though praised the intent of Rahul Dravid about improving the game as a whole who was the team’s skipper for the majority of his coaching stint while he was also quite critical about the mentality of some of the veteran players of the side despite their form not performing as expectation.
“Dravid was really invested in India becoming the best team in the world. Sadly not everyone in the team had the same feeling. They would rather concentrate on being in the team. There was some resistance from some of the senior players, because some of them were coming to the end of their careers.” Gregg further revealed.
Chapell explained the period as a very challenging one but the obvious highlight of the podcast was when mentioned the role of Sourav Ganguly in the side and slammed the former skipper’s professionalism.
“The two years in India were challenging on every front. The expectations were ridiculous. Some of the issues were around Sourav being captain. He didn’t particularly want to work hard. He didn’t want to improve his cricket. He just wanted to be in the team as captain, so that he could control things.”
The cold war between these two actually started after Ganguly was axed from the captain’s role before the south-paw was dropped from ODI side because of his poor form. However, he made made comeback a year later. Chappell later on the podcast explained how even after being offered a new contract he left the role the side departure from the World Cup.
“When Sourav got dropped from the team, we had a lot of attention from the players, because they realized if he can go, anyone can go. We had a great 12 months, but then the resistance got too much, Ganguly came back into the team. The message from the players was loud and clear – ‘We don’t want change.’ Even though the board offered me a new contract, I decided that I did not need that kind of stress”, he added.
