Former Australian skipper Greg Chappell recently made some bawling revelations about his stint as Team India head coach during 2005 to 2007.
The 72-year-old divulged that one of the major issues while coaching India was their skipper Sourav Ganguly, who only wanted to lead the team on the field but didn’t want to work hard as a cricketer.
“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,” Chappell said while speaking on the Cricket Life Stories podcast.
However, the Unley-born admitted that it was the Indian captain who had approached him to mentor the side.
“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,” he enunciated.
The former South Australian coach also stated how senior players were insecure about their place in the side once Ganguly was dropped from the team. Chappell also recalled that the succeeding skipper Rahul Dravid wanted Team India to top the charts.
“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. 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,” Chappell asserted.
The cricketer-turned-commentator also pointed out that though he had a productive tenure with Dravid, once Ganguly was back, the senior players revolted any changes in the side, which led to Chappell not renewing his contract for the next term.
“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,” Chappell concluded.
