GREG CHAPPELL, GANGULY AND THE GAME ... 1

Greg Chappell ought never to have been inducted as the Indian cricket coach considering his disreputable engineering of the underarm incident in a One-day match against New Zealand which was unprecedented in cricket history ever since overarm bowling had begun. That such a person who could resort to such lowliness to win a cricket match was made the coach of the Indian cricket team was sure to spell the doom for Indian cricket during his tenure. What subsequently brewed up between Chappell and the Indian cricket captain, Sourav Ganguly, the latter's exclusion from the team and the complete breakdown of harmony in the Indian dressing room was quite in keeping with Chappell's past record as captain of the Australian cricket team as mentioned earlier and the BCCI should have stepped in more firmly than it did to stop the fiasco that had set in the scene of Indian cricket post the Chappell appointment as cricket coach. Ganguly was hit hardest as he lost his captaincy and even his place in the team and had to enter upon the most psychologically draining period of his cricketing life. He had to battle very hard to make his epic return to Test and One-day cricket which he did with one glorious performance after another to cement his place before bidding goodbye to international cricket after a year and a half.

From this Ganguly-Greg episode a lesson stands luminous for all involved in administrative cricket to learn --- never trust someone with an official management appointment who has earlier publicly broken the trust of the cricketing fraternity and brought the game to disrepute even if for a fleeting moment in a single match. Such a one is temperamentally unsuited for the job and must not be considered worthy of being entrusted with such a responsibility. The BCCI had been blinded by the aura of the cricketing legend, Greg Chappell, which made them heavily overlook his shortcomings as a man-manager, and the price Indian cricket paid. Its performance in the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies was the worst in a long time when it got knocked out of the tournament in the first round. Dressing room acrimony and rumoured divide among the players and their split allegiances fouled up the Indian cricket scenario as the nation plummeted in its cricketing fortunes.

However, things improved after Greg Chappell refrained from seeking a second term as coach and normalcy was restored. With it came the glorious phase in Indian cricket as Mahendra Singh Dhoni took Indian cricket to the pinnacle of cricketing glory with a string of victories in all the major tournaments, the T-20 World Cup in 2007, the One-day Wold Cup in 2011, the World Test Championship, the Champions' Trophy victory and countless others with a relentlessness that has never since stopped and is being carried on to higher heights by Virat Kohli and his men. Do we owe nothing to Greg Chappell for this grand resurgence in Indian cricket and for its attaining unprecedented heights? Of course, we do, and that it what we must ponder in the following phase of this article.

To be continued...