Former Australia skipper Greg Chappell's stint as a coach of the Indian cricket team from 2005 to 2007 was a controversial one.
While Chappell's fallout with former captain Sourav Ganguly is quite famous, several ex-cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh and Laxman have also expressed reservations against his style of coaching.
Speaking on the Cricket Life Stories podcast, Greg Chappell recently recalled his time as India coach, admitting that he got the high-profile job thanks to Ganguly and left it because the resistance within the team got too much after Ganguly’s return to 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.”
“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,” he said.
Chappell then shed light on how he went about his business as India coach, saying that he wanted to change some cultures within the team.
He said, “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.”
“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 further remarked.
