Former Indian cricket coach Greg Chappell has claimed the then captain Sourav Ganguly refused to improve his game during his uneventful coaching stint.
“Some of the issues were around Sourav being captain,” Chappell said on the Cricket Life Stories podcast. “He didn’t particularly like working hard. He wasn’t really looking to improve his cricket. He just wanted to be in the team as captain, so that he could control things.”
Chappell was instrumental in removing Sourav Ganguly as a captain and later, even dropped him from the national side.
“The two years in India were challenging on every front. The expectations were ridiculous.”
Interestingly it was Ganguly who had approached the Australian to coach the Indian side, when he was training at the Cricket Australia high performance center in Brisbane, back in the early 2000s.
Later, Chappell mentioned how Rahul Dravid as a skipper wanted to turn things around after the departure of Ganguly. The 72-year-old also opined that some senior players in the team were busy thinking about their own performances.
“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,” the Australian added.
Chappell coached the Indian cricket team from 2005-2007. However, his tenure with Team India ended after a series of unpleasant episodes.
In the past, Chappell has also worked with the Rajasthan Royals as their academy coach and also fulfilled a consultancy role for Pakistan’s National Cricket Academy.
Featured image : AFP / Saeed Khan
