BCCI wasn’t keen on renewing contract

The coach personally met the BCCI chief Sharad Pawar in Mumbai today to express his wish to not continue.

The Australian is unlikely to be pursued to stay.

According to top officials in the board, it had virtually been decided to not to continue with the Aussie, especially after India’s humiliating exit from the World Cup. To top that, Tendulkar’s statement to the media, along with that of other senior players, was also enough to suggest that Chappell was holding on to the last straw as far as his job was concerned.

“Enough mudslinging has been taking place anyways. Greg was asked to be present at the board meeting in Mumbai and he was scheduled to submit his report. I cannot really say whether he would’ve been asked to continue or not,” a senior board official told The Indian Express.

“With the seniors deciding to regroup themselves and defy the coach, there was little chance that he would stay, isn’t it?” reasoned the official.

The only bright spot in Chappell’s stay as coach of the Indian team happened to be the 14-match winning streak of Indian team and the record-breaking chases that they successfully achieved under the captaincy of Rahul Dravid.

However, Chappell’s personal relations with the players had always been on the edge. While his resentment for former India captain Sourav Ganguly made headlines for more than a year, the Aussie’s differences with players like Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan among others also weren’t a secret in the cricketing circles.

Chappell, instead, along with his friend and support staff member Ian Frazer went easy on choosing their men in the team and sticking by them (mostly through failures) that formed the initial cracks in the unit.

If the grapevine is anything to go by, Chappell’s resignation — that has come at a time when Team India will go through a serious mode of self-introspection in the next couple of days — is bound to further open the can of worms. More so, because a few heavyweights in the BCCI still believe that he should have stayed.

‘Good, Chappell chapter has ended’
Former India skipper Ajit Wadekar today welcomed the resignation of Team India coach Greg Chappell, and said: “It’s good that he has put in his papers, because it wasn’t a happy thing happening anyway in the Indian squad.”

In a critical assessment of Chappell’s tenure, Wadekar told The Indian Express: “How can anybody even talk of a player of Sachin Tendulkar’s capability like that? This was a man, a legend, who has lived and breathed cricket virtually since he was born, and you call him a part of a ‘mafia’? Even terming the seniors as mafia wasn’t the right thing to do. “I am glad the Chappell chapter has ended,” he concluded.

Pawar accepts Chappell’s resignation
Finally, the top man in the Board has reacted. He told mediapersons on Wednesday: “Greg Chappell had actually decided not to extend his contract with the Indian cricket team. The India coach had actually called me up and informed this afternoon that he was not interested in renewing his contract with the board.”

The BCCI president further said as soon as Chappell informed him he confirmed about the same via a letter e-mailed to BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah. “Shah was immediately asked to forward a copy of the letter to avoid any confusion,” Pawar said.