Greg Chappell vs Indian cricket, 2006!

By John Cheeran
It is natural that coach Greg Chappell comes under attack for India's failure to progress into the semifinals of the Champions Trophy.
After all it is not just Champions Trophy. Indian campaign failed in Kuala Lumpur and in the West Indies too the one-day series was lost by a big margin (1-4).
There is cause for concern. When team hits a trough it is the responsibility of the team management to lift the side out of it as quickly as possible. But India's repeated failures have given critics a perfect opportunity to launch afresh assault on Chappell.
Rumours abound that the BCCI will ask Chappell to pack up. However, BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah has refuted them. In some cases rumours got a twist to the effect that Chappell will leave the Indian team after the World Cup.
Everyone knows that the BCCI's contract with Chappell runs out after the World Cup. So such attempts at sensationalism are pointless.
And I would like to add here that if Chappell is smart he should leave Indian team to its wits even in the unlikely scenario of India winning the World Cup. In this, Chappell's guru must be Italian football coach Marcelo Lippi who quit after guiding the team to World Cup glory in Berlin.
It is not just Chappell who is feeling the heat. As skipper, Rahul Dravid too has his worries. So is the case with the entire Indian team.
This is not an apology for Chappell. Indian team requires a hard task master to keep them on their toes so that players dig deep within, to come up with extra-ordinary efforts to seal victories.
But a coach cannot solve Indian cricket's inherent flaws. Let us admit it, despite winning the 1983 World Cup and 1985 Benson and Hedges Cup India were hardly considered the world beaters.
India have tasted success thanks to the quirks of the game. The most popular theory to explain India's success is this. It is not India winning, it is a case of others losing.
To jog memory a bit, India, under Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell, did win some one day matches. They even won the first one-day match during the 2006 West Indies tour. The second match they lost by a single run. The slide started then.
And it goes without many full stops.
And just to mention the fact that much before Chappell came on the scene,when Sourav Ganguly was the monarch of all he surveyed, India had lost 11 one-day series finals..
I bring up that to point out Indian cricket's inherent flaws...
You have to confront the fact that bowling is our weakest segment. It is no secret.
And till this Champions Trophy happened, one-day cricket essentially had remained a batsman's game, more so in the sub-continental conditions.
When Dravid and Chappell combined to score significant wins over Sri Lanka, South Africa, Pakistan and England, these games were held on the batsman friendly pitches in India and Pakistan.
And these flat tracks suited India's game plan of relying on batsmen for their wins. And flat tracks ensured that rival teams which rely on fast bowling (this applied to South Africa and England) did not have any advantage.
That worked nicely and everyone was in heaven. Dravid, Chappell, Kiran More and the BCCI.
As Ian Chappell has observed this Champions Trophy is a break from the one-day tradition in the sub-continent. And India's gameplan for one-dayers foundered on the fresh, bouncy and fast bowler-friendly tracks at Mohali and Ahmedabad.
India tried to make use of the fast bowler friendly conditions in Ahmedabad when they went in with four quick bowlers -- Ajit Agrakar, Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan and RP Singh -- against West Indies. My sympathies to skipper Dravid for the faith he reposed in his quick bowlers.
They were neither quick nor accurate. Indian bowlers again were neither quick nor accurate in Mohali againstAustralia.
It is easy to lambast Dravid and Chappell for not playing off-spinner Ramesh Powar in Ahmedabad and Mohali. All indicators told them that surface will favour pacers. But our pacers came across as sleepwalkers rather than fire-breathers. And the most galling part was that Harbhajan Singh and part-time spinners such as Virender Sehwag troubled the batsmen.
Not playing to our strength, that is, spin bowling was a mistake.
But Dravid turned away from spin with the best of intentions, I presume.
Batting first against Australia after winning the toss in Mohali was another error of judgement by Dravid. Not that India would have won by chasing the total.
But since we tend to consider batting as our strong point, we should have been in the game till the end of the chase. India almost closed in on the Australian total while chasing in Kuala Lumpur.
Defeats expose teams and individuals alike.
Chappell or not, for India to win on a consistent basis players must perform. Players should be told in no uncertain terms that you are as good as only your last over or last innings.
I think Chappell has been trying to do just that inside the dressing room and outside of it too, as it happened in Ahmedabad.
Good luck, India.