Enough of excuses Mr. Chappel, what do you want?

As if the recent Symonds episode was not enough, another episode on racial blame has surfaced again through someone called Mr. Greg Chappel. I am sure we all remember him as India’s coach who talked about his plans and processes for 2 years and how he is going to build a unit who will do reasonably well in the mission world cup 2007. Although it will be immature to blame him alone for India’s infamous early exit from the world cup 2007, yet being the coach of a team, he must get a pie of the blame. Just imagine if India had won the T20 world cup under his regime, what would have happened? He would have been the first person to come forward and claim a big pie out of the success story as to how the processes and the plans that he set up for 2 years had become fruitful now. He has been like this always. I was one of the admirers of him in India when he talked about youth, processes and plans, but if those buzzwords are going to fetch you nothing then they are good for nothing. What shocked me more was his walking away from the scene and not taking even 1% of the responsibility of the disastrous outcome. You are entitled to receive all the acclaims when you produce results by work or by chance, in the same manner you should also be ready to accept the blame of the failure if it has come your way for whatsoever reasons.

If we rewind back to Chappel days as Indian team coach and analyze his statements, we would be able to see his true personality as a sportsperson. First he blames Ganguly to be playing tricks to save his own captaincy and then Ganguly gets dropped in a shocking manner, later on when he makes a comeback and scores runs, Chappel is quick to comment that the break has helped Ganguly in a big way and that is why he is scoring runs now a days and that’s what he had suggested him a year back. If he really thought, the break would help him, why did he himself not ask the selectors to include him again after the break of say few months? Remember, recently he also opined that he never wanted Ganguly back.

India lost in the world cup and at a time when as a coach he should have taken the responsibility of the failure, he decided to walk away from the scene and also didn’t mind making comments about the team’s failure openly in the media. He wanted to justify the fact that he was not responsible for any of these as he didn’t get the team he wanted and had players whom he didn’t want. Obviously he was hinting at those “OLD” players. He talked about new buzzwords like fresh legs and young impressionable mind and by doing so he tried his best to wash the minds of everyone in an attempt to divert everyone’s attention from him to other reasons of failure. To me it seems, he read the Indian media pretty well, and knew that whatever media speaks, becomes the mantra of Indian crowd and they believe it in immensely and to be true, although sad it is, this is a fact. He is such a shrewd personality that he wanted a clean chit from all his wrong doings, so that his career as a coach remains unblemished even in the future. He did point out a few areas of concern for the Indian team, but tell me, as a coach was that the right time for him to expose those hidden facts to the media? It clearly indicates, he never gelled well with the team and he only wanted to walk away unblemished. After all we can only expect this from someone who has a past record of cruel play and tactics in a game that is called gentlemen’s game (Remember that underarm episode?).

As a coach your main job was not to teach the internals of batting techniques to the players like Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly. Your job was to build the team as a working unit wherein every player will have his goal clear in his mind on a match by match basis. Formulate those plans and strategies depending upon the opposition and most importantly, encourage and motivate those 15 players when the chips are down for some reasons. But what did you do for two years that most of the players seem to boycott you? What processes you followed that those had discouraging effects on the players of the caliber of Sachin, Saurav and Yuvraj Singh? What made Sachin went public? He hasn’t been so for the last 17 years, so what is that you did that made him change to this extent? And another player supported him too. Did your processes somehow worked negatively for the team? Did they broke the team into camps and demoralized players? Did you unknowingly killed their enthusiasm and always pressurized them by constantly questioning their effort? What sort of coach you were? Enough said. A manager can’t get his works done by questioning his workers on almost everything they are doing. This is a self defeating move. Isn’t this a very basic lesson? And isn’t something that a coach of any sport should know it by heart?

He walks off the scene and goes into oblivion as if he would never come back but soon makes a return as the coach of Rajasthan Cricket Academy (RCA) and is all over media again. He justifies his coming back to India by saying; India is the place to work for cricket as it offers extreme challenges. Incidentally, team India wins T20 world cup under the regime of newly appointed captain MS Dhoni and in an interview Chappel is quick enough to take a part of the success under his belt by saying how the youth has done it and why this was a part of his vision but no one was ready to listen to him. He also praises MS Dhoni as one of the best person he has ever met not just in the cricketing field but otherwise also. In my opinion that was an attempt by him to accept those who gave results and to blame those who didn’t. How shrewd can it get?

And now the final episode comes when Mr. Greg Chappel remembers his old days and declares that he was the victim of racial attack earlier this year in Orissa and BCCI didn’t take appropriate steps on that and sidelined the issue. This issue had disturbed him and he was hurt by all this. Why all this drama now? To me it seems again as if, he is still looking for reasons to hide his failures as a coach. He somehow wants to show how tough it was to lead the Indian team here amongst all these drama. So in a way, somewhere he has the message to convey that he was not responsible for what happened and perhaps other people (read BCCI, old players, media etc) was responsible. He is once again brain washing the mind of junta and not to forget this is what he truly believes in. The incident occurred close to a One-Day game against West Indies in January this year. A worker of a regional political outfit got past the police cordon at the Biju Patnaik Airport and hit Chappell on the back. And in this light, the incident was nothing but a shameful attempt by the regional political outfit to make waves of news about its launch in the Orissa region. Nothing more could be read out of this even if you read between the lines.

As the coach he believes that the players would follow him. That would certainly happen the best way when he is coaching young guns because as he says, a young mind is impressionable and can be molded as per someone’s wishes. So what does this mean? It should not be hard to conclude that his wishes that everyone follows his orders and commands in the Indian camp were not met with appropriately because Indian team consists of big stars who are treated like heroes in their own backyard. You can’t command them the way you want to command a kid. In this light, I realize he failed to understand Indian culture and Indian people and more importantly those players who were his real weapons of success. So, no surprise that the results were a forgone conclusion. For God’s sake Mr. Chappel, learn from your mistakes and stop beating around the bush as it is not going to fetch you anything.