Chappell told to work with Ganguly

By ICF Staff
September 28 2005

Greg Chappell has been asked by BCCI to work with Indian captain Sourav Ganguly after his extraordinary attack on the Indian captain during the Zimbabwe tour.

BCCI president Ranbir Mahendra announced that Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly had been asked to work together in a professional manner.

Ganguly had been given time to present his case to the committee, which included such names as Sunil Gavaskar, Srini Venkatraghavan and Ravi Shastri, in which he presented evidence refuting the many charges laid out in Chappell's 6-page email to the President demanding that the captain be removed from the team.

Significantly, Mahendra had this to say about Chappell's charges: "After hearing the people concerned, we feel there was some miscommunication and whatever was stated is far from the truth."

This states in unambiguous language that Chappell's report was found to be dishonest, and thus rejected. This comes as a major blow to the Australian, something he should sleep over to consider whether he wants to continue in an environment unlikely to be conducive to his effective continuance with the Indian cricket team.

To add to the woes of the embattled coach, reports out of South Australia where he carried out his only other major coaching stint of five years, implied that he had done a poor job and that players there would not be too disappointed to see him in his current imbroglio.

"Greg Chappell was a poor coach when it came to looking after a group of people," former South Australian player Paul Wilson told the Australian news agency AAP.

Wilson added that Chappell's Indian appointment came as a surprise to many of the players he had coached. He said that while Chappell could be a good batting coach, his major weakness was with effective leadership and people skills, which the Indian team would probably bear witness to after the scandalous revelations of recent days. He also said Chappell tended to discard players quickly and churn the team, often with disastrous results. Wilson said that under the relatively unknown new coach Wayne Phillips, South Australia was recovering lost ground.

However, further specifics about the "Chappell Way" based on Ganguly's reported evidence to BCCI, as well as that of the team manager and the physical trainer, have been shockers, which begs the question why they have allowed him to continue as Indian coach.

• Chappell has leaked information to specific journalists of his choice on sensitive dressing-room conversations, and a few those journalists are prepared to provide the email to the BCCI.
• Chappell has been creating such an environment of insecurity and fear in the dressing room that players have been afraid to even ask for help, lest it be construed as weakness and a reason to drop them.
• Chappell seems to be in the habit of sleeping in the dressing room during games.
• Chappell's charges that the captain did not practice hard enough were rebuffed by both the manager and the trainer.
• His charge that the captain was faking injury was negated by trainer as well as manager.
• Chappell steps on captain's authority often, claiming that he is "the boss".

Ganguly's security in the team will be based on his performance in future series, including against Sri Lanka and South Africa. But Chappell's controversial behavior in his short time so far makes it highly unlikely that he will be accepted by the players regardless of who becomes captain.

John Wright, the diplomatic Kiwi who is Chappell's predecessor, has made several suggestions to Chappell to help him adjust to his new environment. But the inevitable question is whether the atmosphere has become too vitiated and poisoned to allow him to continue coaching this team.

Chappell would be best served by doing the right thing for both the team and himself: Resign.