Dropping Sourav Ganguly set off chain of events which made India job impossible: Greg Chappell

Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell

On Thursday night’s Cricket Legends episode on Fox Sports, Australian legend and former India cricket team coach Greg Chapell spoke about the challenges he had faced in his 2-year tenure at the helm of the Indian team. The period between May 2005 and World Cup 2007 was one of the most tumultous in the national team’s recent history, and Chappell has ever since been widely regarded as a controversial figure in the country.

Chappell said, “It was a great challenge. A tremendous experience from a coaching point of view.”

The India assignment has remained the only international coaching responsibility the Australian has been entrusted with.

Dropping Sourav set off a chain of events: Chappell

Claiming that the first half of his stay had been a successful one, Chappell said, “We dropped a captain – which set off a chain of events which took a while to took effect, and once it took effect it became almost impossible to carry on with the job.

On his relation with Sourav Ganguly, the captain who had suggested his name for the post and who had been forced to be removed, the Australian said, “There is a general thing in India that if you do someone a favour, they’ll owe you forever.

“We talked about the things Sourav needed to do to stay in the team, and he used to agree. But he never actually did the things he promised to do. Plus he was not among the runs at the time. But it was the right thing for the team for him to go at that stage.

“Indian players try to keep their place in the side. I was trying to encourage them to keep getting better.”

I forced Sachin to bat at No.4: Chappell

Chapell also said that his relation with Sachin Tendulkar had reached an impasse after he had forced the Master Blaster to bat lower down the order despite him having re-iterated his desire to open the batting in the 2007 World Cup.

“My relations with certain players had reached a point from where they were never going to be re-built. I did try to do too much too quickly.

“In the 2007 World Cup, I asked Sachin to bat at No.4 because we needed him to. He initially agreed but then recanted and said he wanted to open. I forced him to bat at No.4, after which he did not want to work with me again.”

Chappell also appeared to cast doubts on Tendulkar’s prioritizing the team’s interests over his own.

“In hindsight, I would have found a different solution. I expected that he would want to do what would be right by the team. But he really wanted to bat where he wanted to bat, and that was a real gulf between us.”