Ask Sourav Ganguly about Greg Chappell and that could be your last question to him. Every knows how things ended with Ganguly and Chappell. Ganguly's book revealed that he was warned by Sunil Gavaskar and Ian Chappell, Greg's brother too; aboout how Greg Chappell operated.
But what made Ganguly follow his instinct, even after the warning by veterans? He disclosed that a meeting with Chappell in 2003 was enough to convince him. Ganguly had got in touch with Chappell as he thought he “would be the best person” to help him in his road to 2003 World Cup triumph.
“In our previous meetings he had impressed me with his deep cricketing knowledge,” Ganguly writes in his autobiography “A Century is Not Enough”.
“I thought Greg Chappell would be the best person to take us to the number one slot from the challenger’s position. I had conveyed my personal choice to Mr (Jagmohan) Dalmiya when they were looking for a new Indian coach,” the book, co-authored by Gautam Bhattacharya and published by Juggernaut, added.
Gavaskar was one of the people who opposed Ganguly's decision. “A few people advised me against this move. Sunil Gavaskar was one of them. ‘Sourav, think about it. With him around you might have problems in running the team. His past coaching record is not spectacular, he told me,” writes Ganguly.
Even Dalmiya had called Ganguly for an urgent meeting to let him know that even Ian Chappell isn't in favor of Greg as India's coach.
“He shared in confidence that even his brother Ian thought Greg might not be the right choice for India. Well, I decided to ignore all these warnings and follow my instincts,” Ganguly writes.
“The rest as they say is history. But then that’s life. Some scripts go your way, like my tour of Australia, and some don’t, like the Greg chapter. I conquered the country but not one of its citizens."
He wrote about the most tough phase of his life.
“This (the year 2005) remains the most turbulent chapter of my life. Not only was my captaincy suddenly taken away for no reason but I was also dropped as a player. I feel angry even as I write this. What happened was unthinkable. Unacceptable. Unforgivable,” he writes.
“History hasn’t recorded many instances of a winning captain being dropped so unceremoniously, that too after scoring a hundred in the last Test series. In Indian cricket there are no such parallels and I doubt whether there will ever be. So Mr Gregory Stephen Chappell and the selection committee led by Kiran More have indeed put me in august company,” concluded Ganguly.
