Mumbai: Former Australian captain and great Greg Chappell has said that coaching and managing India was tough and complicated than he had thought. There are so many layers to life in India.
“It was perhaps a little bit more complicated than anyone could have imagined. There were so many layers to life in India, let alone cricket. That was pretty hard to expect anyone to master, particularly an outsider,” Chappell told ESPN Cricinfo in an interview.
Chappell had a tumultuous two years as coach of India, where he fell out with skipper Sourav Ganguly and had issues with many senior players regarding the work ethic and priorities were questioned.
Asked to reflect back on his time, Chappell drew the analogy comparing the popularity of Indian superstar cricketers with that of iconic Beatles who also had a crazy following during 1960’s upto early 1970’s.
“Being with the Indian cricket team was what it must have been like travelling with the Beatles. It was remarkable the way they were feted around the country wherever they went. Big crowds gathered at airports. The whole airport would come to a standstill.
“To see it from the inside and to understand some of the pressures on the players. It wasn’t an easy thing to be an Indian cricketer, especially a renowned Indian cricketer. The expectations, the interruptions to their day-to-day lives, and the restrictions on their ability to move freely – I marvelled at the way they managed to absorb all of that and just get on with it,” Chappell tried to explain the pressures of being an Indian cricketer.
Chappell believes that Indian team was more talented and had much more confidence in their abilities than their predecessors from the earlier era. The team had more to offer than earlier Indian team of 1970s and 1980s.
“The one that I coached had more depth in talent. There was a lot of talent in the teams we played against in the top half a dozen players, but then it dropped away a bit. More from an experience and a belief point of view rather than a lack of talent.
“The Indian teams that I coached, on paper, had one of the best batting line-ups that any Test team could boast. Not many that outshone it as far as talent was concerned. The depth of talent in that group was extraordinary.”
But Chappell did believe that whether players such as Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman played to their potential or underachieved.
“I don’t know that they got the best out of the group that they had. Other teams probably got more out of the talent they had,” he said.
“There are a number of reasons for that. Partly because they didn’t have the bowling attack to make the most of that batting line-up. Away from India it didn’t do as well as it probably should have done.”
Chappell received a lot of flak from media and administration. Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni blossomed under his coaching and Chappell tried to bring professionalism and accountability to the job.