B D NarayankarThose who had blamed Greg Chappell for India’s poor display in South Africa should shed shame and give credit to him for the magnificent one-day series wins against West Indies and Sri Lanka. If they don’t, they should stop sabotaging his image any further. Anyway, blaming a coach is not the right thing in cricket. It is the team and the captain that has to be blamed for debacles.
There was hardly any cry for Zaheer Khan when Chappell dropped him from the side for the 2005 Zimbabwe tour and asked him to get his basics right at county and domestic cricket. But all hell broke loose when Sourav Ganguly was axed from captaincy and then dusted out from the squad for his poor batting performance over two seasons.
Chappell, however, knew Ganguly’s modest innings were draining him out which was neither helping him nor the team. So, he dropped … err gave Ganguly a mind space to work on his batting renaissance.
And what happened to Ganguly? He made a solid return – he won man-of-the-series against Sri Lanka in the just-concluded one-day series. The last two months had been fantastic for him. He finished the three-Test series in South Africa as the highest run-getter for India. Against Windies, he registered two fifties in three ODIs.
Just when media was ruing over the omission of Irfan Pathan, when he became the first Indian player to be sent back home on an overseas series, it ignored the return of Zaheer after being dropped by Chappell in 2005. Like Ganguly, he has returned with a bang. Suddenly, Rahul has started looking upto him to give him early breakthroughs. What a turn around! Yet Chappell has been booed – what a tragedy.
What about Virendra Sehwag! He almost selected himself into the Indian squad for the one-day series against West Indies when he made a swasbuckling century against Haryana. The 47-run innings against Sri Lanka in Visakhapatnam one-dayer must have done a world of good to him. In fact, he never looked out-of-form, but was failing to convert 20s into 50s and 100s.
What does all this say? Chappell means business and will not take things lying down. Unlike Indians, who believe in sugarcoating diplomacy, he bluntly tells the truth to the dislike of our parliamentarians and stars like Ganguly, Sehwag and Zaheer including his blue-eyed boy Pathan. He analyses the problems within teams.
We need such a coach to overcome complacency, which could not have been done by someone else like John Wright, Madan Lal or Kapil Dev.
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