Was Greg Chappell the right choice to coach India coach after New Zealander John Wright made way for him in 2005? In retrospect one believes that the BCCI did not make a right choice, considering that he produced more victories in India than abroad.
As a player, Greg, was supposed to be one of the finest batsman Australia ever produced. But it seemed that coaching was not his forte. After all, he never had the experience of coaching an international team once he had hung his boots as a cricketer.
The biggest drawback of Greg’s coaching tenure with the Indian team was his insatiable hunger for experimentation, which met with a disaster.
His ploy to juggle and shuffle the batting order by playing around with cricketers’ fortunes seemed to shake their confidence right till the onset of the World Cup and through the tournament as well. And, the results were there for everyone to see as he messed up the entire dynamics of Indian cricket in association with captain Rahul Dravid, who never seemed to be bold and forthright like his predecessor Sourav Ganguly.
The Dravid-Chappell combo seemed to push India deep into a hole rather than lift the team out of it from time to time.
The batting positions of players of the caliber of Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Irfan Pathan, including that of Dravid himself were relentlessly toyed with during Chappell’s tenure.
His first few months or in fact days with Indian cricket brought about the exit of one of India’s most successful captains – Sourav Ganguly.
It was a pity then that Ganguly did not find any supporters in Indian cricket to help him hold on to his position in the team, which had become a world beater under his astute
leadership.
Once Greg arrived he played his cards well, sought the ouster of Ganguly first and then rallied for Dravid to be roped in as captain at the expense of Ganguly’s exit from Indian cricket for a while.
Unfortunately, even Dravid seemed to have kept mum when Ganguly needed total support from his pro with whom he debuted at Lord’s in 1996 while scoring his maiden hundred at the Mecca of world cricket.
It was a pity that Dravid, who fought tooth and nail to retain a terribly out of form Virender Sehwag for a place in the World Cup squad, never batted in favour of Ganguly then.
Kudos to Ganguly, who gave himself time until World Cup, to make a comeback into the Indian team and did it in great style once he was selected for the South Africa tour. He made his bat do the talking and the rest is history.
Coming to Greg, his lunacy to play around with key batting positions cost India the World Cup. A team as talented as India was thrown into shambles by one man’s single-minded desire to prove his point and that was to keep experimenting.
Had Greg given the team the stability it needed in terms of secured batting positions for senior pros, India would have done much better than enduring a first round exit.
Dravid’s captaincy was a total failure, as he never seemed to motivate his players on the big stage and instead of him taking the lead role by stepping up the order, the “Wall” simple crumbled when it mattered the most. At times his decisions seemed dreadful.
It is an after thought that Dravid now wants to own total responsibility for India’s shock exit from the World Cup, but can he undo what has already transpired. He isn’t God any way.
Source : http://www.cricketworldcuplatest.com
As a player, Greg, was supposed to be one of the finest batsman Australia ever produced. But it seemed that coaching was not his forte. After all, he never had the experience of coaching an international team once he had hung his boots as a cricketer.
The biggest drawback of Greg’s coaching tenure with the Indian team was his insatiable hunger for experimentation, which met with a disaster.
His ploy to juggle and shuffle the batting order by playing around with cricketers’ fortunes seemed to shake their confidence right till the onset of the World Cup and through the tournament as well. And, the results were there for everyone to see as he messed up the entire dynamics of Indian cricket in association with captain Rahul Dravid, who never seemed to be bold and forthright like his predecessor Sourav Ganguly.
The Dravid-Chappell combo seemed to push India deep into a hole rather than lift the team out of it from time to time.
The batting positions of players of the caliber of Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Irfan Pathan, including that of Dravid himself were relentlessly toyed with during Chappell’s tenure.
His first few months or in fact days with Indian cricket brought about the exit of one of India’s most successful captains – Sourav Ganguly.
It was a pity then that Ganguly did not find any supporters in Indian cricket to help him hold on to his position in the team, which had become a world beater under his astute
leadership.
Once Greg arrived he played his cards well, sought the ouster of Ganguly first and then rallied for Dravid to be roped in as captain at the expense of Ganguly’s exit from Indian cricket for a while.
Unfortunately, even Dravid seemed to have kept mum when Ganguly needed total support from his pro with whom he debuted at Lord’s in 1996 while scoring his maiden hundred at the Mecca of world cricket.
It was a pity that Dravid, who fought tooth and nail to retain a terribly out of form Virender Sehwag for a place in the World Cup squad, never batted in favour of Ganguly then.
Kudos to Ganguly, who gave himself time until World Cup, to make a comeback into the Indian team and did it in great style once he was selected for the South Africa tour. He made his bat do the talking and the rest is history.
Coming to Greg, his lunacy to play around with key batting positions cost India the World Cup. A team as talented as India was thrown into shambles by one man’s single-minded desire to prove his point and that was to keep experimenting.
Had Greg given the team the stability it needed in terms of secured batting positions for senior pros, India would have done much better than enduring a first round exit.
Dravid’s captaincy was a total failure, as he never seemed to motivate his players on the big stage and instead of him taking the lead role by stepping up the order, the “Wall” simple crumbled when it mattered the most. At times his decisions seemed dreadful.
It is an after thought that Dravid now wants to own total responsibility for India’s shock exit from the World Cup, but can he undo what has already transpired. He isn’t God any way.
Source : http://www.cricketworldcuplatest.com
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