Sourav Ganguly

Calcutta: Excerpts from Sachin Tendulkar’s soon-to-be-released autobiography, Playing it My Way, about the Greg Chappell episode in Indian cricket has triggered an avalanche of reaction from Sourav Ganguly.

In simpler words, Sourav stepped out and hit questions on India’s former coach out of the park. Sachin has revealed how Chappell approached him in 2007, before the ODI World Cup, to help him remove Rahul Dravid from captaincy.

When asked about the matter, Sourav, at Eden Gardens, said: “If he (Sachin) has written so, I’m not surprised.”

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Later, while speaking on a television channel to which he is contracted, the former India captain had a lot more to say. So bitter is Sourav’s experience that he doesn’t even want an apology from the Australian. “He can call up Dravid, he can call up Sachin, but he dare not dial my number… Time for sorry is gone… I’ve finished playing and I’ve moved on. This is a mistake which is unpardonable,” Sourav said.

“It (Sachin’s comments) hasn’t surprised me… In 2005, when I lost my captaincy, the issue was the same… In 2007, just before the World Cup, the issues were the same… I feel sad for Dravid, because it is a matter of pride to be the captain… And then someone goes and talks about your captaincy at your back… I’m sure he did the same thing when I was the captain… It’s a very sad situation… I really feel sorry for Greg… I really feel sorry for Indian cricket that it had to go down to this level,” Sourav added.

Recollecting his own experience, Sourav said: “I conveyed these issues to the (then) selection committee and then to the Board… I also remember the (Board) meeting in Mumbai, where I said them the same thing… I said I was asked to drop several senior players including Sachin, Dravid, (VVS) Laxman, Zaheer (Khan), Harbhajan (Singh)…

“Sachin has said that in his book now… But it is nothing new to me. I’ve heard that before… Obviously I lost my place in the team after that tour of Zimbabwe. So I can see where it is coming from.”

Asked if Chappell was poor at man-management, Sourav said: “I don’t think this issue boils down to man-management. What I get out of this statement is that it’s about control… You control someone and then you try to do it with another person… I don’t know where his mind was… Did he come to coach India? Did he come to take Indian cricket forward or do these unnecessary things? It’s really sad to have played in Indian cricket during that period with these things going on.”

Did Chappell adopt the Australian way of running the team? “Honestly, I don’t know whether this is an Australian style… You go to Ricky Ponting and say I want to get rid of Michael Clarke as captain, then you go to Michael Clarke and say I want to get rid of David Hussey (for example) as the captain… I don’t think cricket works that way in any part of the world… Forget about Australia or India …

“I didn’t understand what was the logic behind it. For me, it was complete madness… He was completely out of his mind. In terms of foreign coaches, we have had some fabulous experiences with John Wright and Gary Kirsten… They have been outstanding, fantastic… Indian cricket have progressed under them. I’ve not played under Duncan Fletecher, so I can’t really comment on him.

Sourav, however, have no complaints against his teammates for not speaking up during that time. “Sometimes, as a player, you don’t want to get into controversies… You want to stay out of it. So I can understand where it’s coming from… What they wanted to say and when they wanted to keep quiet… They saw what happened to me…

“I lost my captaincy after winning the series (in Zimbabwe) 2-0 and getting a Test match hundred as well… I have never captained India after that. I couldn’t play ODIs for one year in spite of being the best one-day cricketer in the world at that time. So they saw what happened and they didn’t want to risk it… And that’s quite natural. Dravid would have done the same thing… So I don’t blame them, it’s just the way the sport works,” Sourav said.

He further added: “I don’t think I was made the fall guy by my teammates… My teammates were not responsible for my ouster. Neither Sachin nor Dravid were responsible for me not being the captain of India. There were other people who didn’t want me to be the captain . So I should not blame the players for not speaking out at that time because they were not involved in me not continuing as the captain…

“There are people who take decisions and they had taken the decision then. A lot of things happened at that time co-incidentally and that worked well for Greg… But at the end of the day, it’s not about Sourav Ganguly or Rahul Dravid or Sachin Tendulkar being the captain, it’s about Indian cricket… And the bottom line is that during that period, we won nothing… We didn’t qualify for the World Cup Super Eight, we went to South Africa and got killed and we hardly looked like a team.”