Chappell’s mad; Dravid lacked courage to revolt: Sourav Ganguly

[sherlyk]

Ahead of India’s 4-Test series vs Australia, Sourav Ganguly has made a scathing attack at former Indian coach Greg Chappell, while taking a dig at Rahul Dravid at the same time. Chappell is said to be having a special session with the Australian team to demistify Sachin Tendulkar.
Speaking to a news channel, Ganguly said whatever Chappell will do will not work and also called him mad. “If you look at his tenure with the Indian team as well as with the Australian team, his mistakes were similar. I think if a person repeats his mistakes and even loses his job, I would call him a ‘mad’.
Ganguly was also scathing in his comments about how Chappell-the coach operated. “He came with some personal vendetta and also lacked foresight. He didn’t want a settled dressing room. He made mistake after mistake but the then captain Rahul Dravid never had the courage to stop him (Chappell) from his wrongdoing.”
According to Ganguly, with whom Chappell shared a tumultous captain-coach relationship, the latter’s presence in Australia’s support staff unit during their tour of India, back in 2008 wasn’t of much help.
“If you look back at 2008 series which happened to be my last, Chappell was present in Australian team’s support staff. Yet we won the series 2-0. Therefore, I don’t think his presence would make any difference this time also,” Ganguly said on Sunday.
A couple of days back, a report in the Daily Telegraph stated that former India coach Chappell has been invited by current coach Mickey Arthur to address Aussie players on how to tackle champion batsman Sachin Tendulkar.
“Chappell will address the Australian squad for the first Test next week and he is the one man with the knowledge to demystify the champion (Tendulkar) Australia never feel they have got to the bottom of,” the report said.
“To Australian bowlers, Tendulkar has been the master they have never mastered. His record against Australia in Tests – he averages 60.6 with 11 centuries in 31 Tests – makes him the greatest Aussie basher of his generation,” it further stated.
Chappell in his recently published autobiography had stated that Ganguly wanted him to be “grateful” for getting him the India coach’s job.
“He expected I would be so grateful to him for getting me the job, that I’d become his henchman in his battle to remain captain. I, on the other hand, took on a job with the primary responsibility to Indian cricket and the Indian people,” Chappell says in the book ‘Fierce Focus’.
Ganguly on his part said that it was his “mistake” to get Chappell the coach’s job. “He was against Tendulkar, Laxman, Zaheer, Harbhajan and all of them have proved to be world class players. They are still performing for their country even now,” Ganguly said.
Asked about whether BCCI could have acted more wisely, Ganguly replied, “At that point of time, BCCI was having a change of guard. So there wasn’t much they could have done about it.”
Another former India captain Kapil Dev feels that Chappell’s Australian ways of dealing with situation wasn’t in sync with the Indian culture. “In India, we don’t readily shut the door on anyone. There should be a certain degree of respect associated with the manner in which one handles the case of senior players. Look at Gary Kirsten, he did a fabulous job with the Indian team,” Kapil stated.




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