Sourav Ganguly at his Behala home with daughter Sana on Wednesday, a couple of hours after his return from Mumbai. Picture by Santosh Ghosh

Sydney: Former India coach John Wright, who has been accused by successor Greg Chappell of being soft in his handling of the team in the sensational e-mail to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), on Wednesday slammed the former Australian captain for meddling in selection matters and throwing himself in such a situation so early in his tenure.

“Greg has only been in the job four months and, at the moment, it doesn’t look like they (he and Sourav Ganguly) would go on a holiday together,” said Wright.

“It looks like they’re having some teething problems at the moment and it will be interesting to see how it goes,” the former New Zealand skipper told a Melbourne daily. Wright is coaching the World XI for next month’s Super Series matches against Australia.

“I always looked at it this way ? the team was selected for me, whoever that was, with a captain, with a player. You didn’t get a vote on selection, but my job was to ensure that as coach they were prepared and performed to the best of their ability,” he said, indirectly taking a swipe at Chappell’s observation that the Indian captain as well as some of the players did not deserve to be in the team.

“It was almost like performance coaching and I hope we made some progress over the four- and-a-half years I was there.”

However, Wright said he hoped Chappell would succeed in taking the Indian team a little bit further.

“In any team situation there are always issues ? sometimes personal, sometimes performance. You want Greg to come on and hopefully he’ll take it that little bit further,” the former New Zealand captain said.

“He’ll obviously do it in his own style and that may be different from the methods I used. It’s a process,” he said.

Wright was speaking after an uneasy truce was brokered between Chappell and Sourav.

The New Zealander also said that during his stint there were times when his opinion was not always appreciated by the players. “I’ve always tried to be very honest with the players and at times, the players didn’t appreciate that,” said Wright who helped India win away series’ against Australia and Pakistan, and also guided them to the 2003 World Cup final.

Wright said Indians were an extremely passionate lot when it came to cricket and that made coaching a challenging job. “It’s a challenging job, a very passionate environment and all sorts of issues can arise, sometimes from nowhere.” (PTI)