He drops an underperforming Ganguly (ages ago, might I add) and now he is the demon spawn, with each move of his being criticised and brought to our attention.
Pathetic! Let the man live his life!
Pathetic! Pathetic!!!
Who, pray, is more pathetic here? The man who lied, deceived, power mongered, or his fans like yourself? Quite a few cricketers have gone on record (Harbhajan lately) to say how GC destroyed the spirit of the Indian team, with or without Ganguly. He has openly stated, in a press conferance, in the middle of a tour, that a member of his team (Pathan) is short of confidence. A man of proven integrity, and frankly, a much much better cricketer than his majesty, has come up, after seventeen years in international cricket, with the line that the water has risen above the head, when, after 26,000 international runs, his committment was questioned. The boy wonder GC championed (Raina) was so frozen by the polarized situation he himself created that the boy had to be left out of a match in South Africa. As a coach Greg Chappel tried to divide and rule and destroyed the moral fibre of the Indian team. As a cricketer and captain, he underarmed. Who are you defending and why?
Let us get this clear. If all of Greg's sins are to be condoned because he brought about something you devoutly desired, namely, the dropping of Ganguly, then I think it is a pathetically myopic view. We all agree that SG should have been dropped, but, as he himself stated, in a better way. The better way is all that matters! It is precisely the absence of that which ultimately derailed the Indian team. The violent polarization of feelings that GC created lives with us to this day. I find it distressful that people that people want to drop SG after 5 poor scores following a stupendous year, or want to go after Dravid after an indifferent few months. We had our Ganguly camps and Dravid camps years before GC came to the scene, but never did it degenerate to this abysmal level. Today, I think Indian cricket fans of both hues are a trifle disappointed if both Dravid and Ganguly crack hundreds in a match. They are happy, but the icing would have been complete if the other party had hatched a duck and their own man had compensated by hitting a double. Who do you think is responsible for this gutter level polarization? Frankly, who do you think destroyed Rahul Dravid? Who do you think crippled Suresh Raina? Both Dravid and Raina, God's creatures big and small, realized somewhere down the line that it was not about their success. In the environment that GC had engendered, they, and their performances were to be nothing but validations of the Coach's ego and his messianic projections. This is what I think: when a teen age Suresh Raina went out to bat, he knew that it was not just about him doing well and finding a spot in the world of men; it was about proving two things, that he, as the prophet pronounced so cruelly, was the next big thing, and that he was good enough to keep Ganguly out. The latter was not a simple fact like that of a young Vishwanath keeping an old Borde out, or a young Ganguly or Dravid spelling the end of Manjrekar. It was about proving Greg's grand, megalomaniacal vision. The talk at home was too intense; the affects were too strong (I shamefully admit that I sometimes wanted Raina or Kaif to fail simply because I wanted Greg's evil tenure to end); it was just too great a burden for Suresh's young shoulders. He froze.
Is this how one is supposed to manage a team? I this how one is to nurture young talent and take proven campaigners to a higher level? (Ask Sehwag and Harbhajan).
Let me propose two scenarios
ImaginaryGreg is not in the picture. SG's runs have dried up, even his fans feel that he should take a break. The ideal situation would be to strip him off his captaincy and see, for a series more, how he performs without the burden and then take a call. The so called Gangulians (exceptions would not deserve that name) would not have existed in that case.
RealYou know what happened.
Now let us return to the 'pathetic' part. Greg Chappel has, for sometime, destroyed the moral fibre of Indian cricket. Nowadays I see that if Dravid works himself into form with a fighting century, or if Ganguly plays a match winning 87, Indian fans in general are not as universally pleased as they should be. It reminds me of the regionalism and factionalism that existed in Indian cricket before the advent of Ganguly. That is not good. The point is, however, that all of these emotional outbursts (if this thread is any evidence) refer back to the polarizing tenure of GC. Pray, how can we just simply let him live his life in that case?
GC's life is pathetic. As an individual he is pathetic. As a leader and mentor he is more than pathetic. I wish him well as he lives out his pathetic life.
AuthorTopic: Great to hear the Coach! (Read 1456 times)
