Cricketing Rifts 17 - The Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell War Tags: Arunabha Sengupta, Sourav Ganguly, Greg Chappell, India,

Australia, Fierce Focus, BCCI, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan Singh, cricketing rifts, 2500 Sourav Ganguly (L) and Greg Chappell Getty Images The Dhoni-Sehwag rift may have been true or blown out of proportion by the medi a. However, far from being unique, discords such as this have been commonplace i n the history of the game. In this series, Arunabha Sengupta looks at some of th e most infamous feuds of cricket. In this episode he looks at the bad blood betw een Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappell. --The appointment When Greg Chappell arrived at New Delhi s Taj Palace Hotel to appear be interviewe d for the position of the coach of the Indian cricket team, he went through a dr ess rehearsal of what he was about to get himself into. He entered the hotel to find it swarming with the biggest gathering of journalis ts he had ever witnessed. According to his engaging biography Fierce Focus, they knew little about cricket, but were desperate for ... anything they could turn i nto a headline ... treating rumour and innuendo as hard news. The interview, supposed to start at 2.45 pm was pushed back, and when at 4.25 pm , he was finally ushered into the room where the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) honchos sat waiting, he was informed that it would have to be brie f because the Board President, Jagmohan Dalmiya, had to leave for a meeting with the Prime Minister at 5.00 pm. However, he was welcome to resume his presentati on once Dalmiya returned, whenever that might be. The next day, while deliberations were still going on, one board member was acco sted in front of the toilet by three journalists looking for a leak of a differe nt kind. That is how the news of Chappell s appointment was made public. The new c oach was bombarded with phone calls before he was informed by BCCI. Later, SK Nair, the board secretary, requested Chappell to walk through the hote l lobby to keep the journalists happy. A perplexed Chappell asked whether it wou ld not be better to arrange a press conference. The replies he got were, No, that would just encourage them to ask more questions and (don t bother about helping the m understand the truth because) they ll say what they want anyway. It was the Australian s first experience of working in India. If this was baptism by the curious fireworks associated with cricket in this country, it fell woeful ly short of preparing him fully. While his predecessor John Wright had dealt wit h the situation by quietly positioning himself in the background, Chappell tried to rush headlong through the complicated networked tapestries of Indian cricket s corridors of power and the murky journalistic quagmires, stumbling and tripping throughout his two year stint. The Honeymoon Period The many problems that arose with Sourav Ganguly have been written and rewritten , commented upon and ridiculed often enough for the facts to get buried under th e accumulated sound and fury.

The beginning of the relationship had been promising enough. Some weeks ahead of taking the Indian team to Australia in 2003-04, Ganguly approached Chappell for help with his batting technique. Of this meeting Chappell writes, a fine batsman (who) had trouble with the ball rising into the line of his body ... he was ext remely likeable and an excellent student. The results were admirable, as Ganguly fought his way to his most celebrated century at Brisbane against Jason Gillespi e, Nathan Bracken, Andy Bichel and Stuart McGill. Ganguly even wrote the foreword for the book, Greg Chappell on Coaching. It has been stated that the influence of Ganguly was instrumental in getting the coaching job for Chappell. Yet, when their relationship resumed, the harmony wa s left Down Under and war drums took over. The Rhodesian Affair In Fierce Focus, Chappell states that This was a very different Sourav from the p ositive, ambitious young man I d met in Australia. This Sourav was full of self do ubt and caught up in his own struggle for survival...He didn t want a coach ... he wanted a political ally. In recent press conferences, Ganguly has responded by saying, Greg Chappell ruine d my career and somewhat more unequivocally, Greg Chappell was mad. Cultural differences have been cited as the reason for the conflict, and there i s a lot of merit in the argument. Here was a hardnosed Australian cricketer to w hom the only thing that mattered was performance. On the other side was a team o f superstars, many of whom according to Chappell, were not interested in improvin g their game. As Chappell set exacting standards without trying to understand the Indian syste m, insecurities supposedly engulfed the team. The problems surfaced during the t our of Zimbabwe. Here is what Chappell says in his book about the infamous tour match before the first Test, Sourav, batting when the second new ball became due, decided to walk off after four overs. He was retiring hurt, but appeared to have no injury. I su ggested he go for an MRI scan, but he declined. He was, in my view, simply frigh tened of a failure before the Test series. ... He had no concept what it did to the team morale ... nor did it help that when the danger had passed, he asked Ku mble to retire so that he could go back in. Admirably, Kumble ignored him. The n ext day, I asked some of the team about Sourav s antics, and they said it had been going on for years. In subsequent discussions between the captain and coach, Chappell revealed his o pinion that Ganguly was not in a state to lead the side and it would be better f or his batting if he relinquished captaincy. The Indian captain reportedly threa tened to walk out of the tour, and had to be reassured that he would be supporte d if he remained at the helm. In the first Test match, Ganguly scored a century, his first in over one and a h alf years, but the innings was painstakingly slow against a club class Zimbabwea n bowling attack. Meeting the press after his innings, he disclosed without ment ioning names that he had been pressured to give up captaincy before the match. Later during the tour, Chappell sent the notorious email to the BCCI, which crit icised Ganguly as being unfit to lead the team. Among other accusations, it spok e of the injury during the tour match, Ganguly s reluctance to accept his lack of fo

rm, unprofessional approach to training and his deliberately chopping and changi ng the team at the last moment and thus playing havoc with the confidence of you ng batsmen . Chappell should have anticipated after his initial experience with the Board and the media that the email would not remain confidential. The press had a field d ay, television channels went on overdrive and fans went berserk. Almost immediately, Harbhajan Singh came out in support of Ganguly and rubbished Chappell s claims, immediately earning himself and his team mates a gag order. Upon returning to India, both Ganguly and Chappell were summoned to a BCCI board meeting in Mumbai, and both were urged to work together in the best "interests of Indian cricket". We were told to hatchet the bury (yes that was actually what was said) , Chappell quips about the communication. Omission and Reactions Subsequently, Ganguly was omitted from the ODI squad, Rahul Dravid being appoint ed captain of the team. For a few Test matches, inclusion as all-rounder and inter vention of the likes of new board chairman, Sharad Pawar, somehow kept Ganguly i n the side. Dravid volunteered to open the innings to free up a position for him in the middle-order. But, after India lost the deciding Test against Pakistan w ith Dravid failing as an opener, the former captain was omitted from the side. Ganguly s bitterness about the omission has never been a secret. Just before the 2 011-12 tour of Australia, he hit out claiming Chappell had created insecurity in the team, and had targeted all players, including Sachin Tendulkar. He went on to add that skipper, d not have the guts to revolt . Rahul knew what was happening was wrong but he di

When in March this year Dravid announced his retirement, Ganguly modified his st atement saying that he did not have anything against Dravid, since his omission had been the result of a scheming Greg Chappell. What is lost in the tale of personalities is something that should ideally deter mine inclusions and omissions, namely, performance. For Indian stars, this attri bute more often than not takes a remote backseat in the scheme of things. When Chappell emailed his analysis about Ganguly, the southpaw was at the nadir of his batting prowess, and it was not just a temporary loss of form. Since his century in Brisbane, he had struggled in the interim year and a half, averaging in the low 30s in 13 Tests, which went down to 26.31 with just three fifties whe n one ignored two figure-bloating matches against Bangladesh. In the last major series, at home against Pakistan, he had managed just 48 in five innings. In the last 30 One-Day Internationals (ODIs), he had scored at 29 runs per innin gs, with just seven fifties of which two were against Bangladesh, and one apiece against Kenya and UAE. To an Australian cricketer, these suggested the remedy of working on the game in first-class cricket. However, India is a completely different ball game. Ganguly was a legend, and ac cording to senior newspaper journalist like LP Sahi, icons could not be handled in this way. Harsha Bhogle, in numerous television programmes, kept wondering wh ether it was possible to motivate oneself to turn out in Ranji Trophy matches in towns like Guwahati and Siliguri after having played at Melbourne, Lord s and Cap

e Town. Ganguly s home state, with its pitiful share of sporting heroes, found it unaccept able that the man who had captained India so long and successfully could be show n the door in this way. Chappell soon joined the clan of the mythical demons. No t only were his effigies ringing global warning sirens as they went up in flames , his head was cast as that of an asura in some of the Durga Puja pandals. Rail blockades, parliamentary questions the whole ridiculous cycle of off- field dram a was played out. When India played against South Africa at the Eden, in a disgraceful show of cul t worship, the huge crowd cheered the touring side to victory. Chappell did not earn too many fans by giving the crowd the finger. It was full blown cross-cultural communication failure. And when Ganguly did emerge stronger from his stint in domestic cricket, it was not accepted that best steps had been taken rather it was all about proving Chap pell wrong. Return of Ganguly and exit of Chappell With the Indian team struggling in South Africa, and young replacements like Sur esh Raina and Yuvaraj Singh doing precious little to fill the vacated spot, Gang uly made a successful comeback after ten months. The technique had been worked on and the new edition of the left-hander looked f ar more solid at the wicket than he had done in recent years. The next couple of seasons witnessed strong performances, including some of the best innings of hi s career, and Ganguly remained a force to reckon with till his retirement. Chappell s trouble streaked tenure with the Indian team ended with a first round e xit from the World Cup. While Chappell complained about not being given the team he wanted, with selecto rs going in for brand name players, the excuses fell on deaf ears. For most, he ha d been a destructive agent in the team. To many the debacle in West Indies underlined that Chappell had undone the good work of John Wright and had taken Indian cricket to the brink of disaster and it was left to Gary Kirsten to resurrect the team into a band of world beaters yet again. However, again that is a fable of sorts created in the fumes of controversy, one of those fantasies Indian cricket fans love to indulge in. During the Chappell era, India managed a mixed bag of results, with some memorab le highlights. In Tests, they won seven and lost four, including a series win in West Indies after a wait of 35 years, and the first ever win on South African s oil. In ODIs, they won 32 and lost 27, ending up with a win-loss ratio exactly e qual to the 1.18 managed under Ganguly. Aftermath The coaching period of Chappell has ended and so has the international career of Ganguly, but they have not been relegated to the backstage. The two remain larg er than life as they always have. And many a times do they come out with comment s which either deal with that period of turbulence or are triggered by it.

Before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy of 2011-12, Ganguly claimed that Chappell s offe r to help the Australian team by demystifying Indian batsmen augured well for In dia because the former Chappell had proved to be a failure in every coaching-rel ated assignment. Well, Ganguly himself should know better, because after the 144 at Brisbane, he had gone on record saying, I have no hesitation in saying he (Ch appell) has made a significant contribution to my batting. He suggested a few me ntal and technical adjustments and they must have been good. Additionally, as sho wn above, Chappell s tenure did have a fair amount of positives. Chappell for his part has revealed his side of the story in Fierce Focus, althou gh some of the figures stated in the book are quite incorrect. To add fuel to fi re, he recently came out with blistering comments on India s culture and heritage that were both shockingly insensitive and hilariously ignorant. If earlier he ha d struggled to build a rapport with the Indian people because of cultural differ ences, he has done more than his bit to enlarge the gulf with his comments. The duel has been long and bloody, and with these two colourful characters in th e fray, there is no sign of any white flag. (Arunabha Sengupta is trained from Indian Statistical Institute as a Statisticia n. He works as a Process Consultant, but purifies the soul through writing and c ricket, often mixing the two into a cleansing cocktail. The author of three nove ls, he currently resides in the incredibly beautiful, but sadly cricket-ignorant , country of Switzerland. You can know more about him from his author site, his cricket blogs and by following him on Twitter) http://www.cricketcountry.com/cricket-articles/Cricketing-Rifts-17-The-Sourav-Ga nguly-Greg-Chappell-War-/13523