Day after, his deputy speaks: Greg realised no point staying on, Sachin quotes not the issue

Greg Chappell may have decided to walk away much before Sachin Tendulkar’s outburst because the coach had already realised that he had nothing more left to give Indian cricket, at this stage.

Greg Chappell may have decided to walk away much before Sachin Tendulkar’s outburst because the coach had already realised that he had nothing more left to give Indian cricket, at this stage.

The evening before Chappell hands over his report to the BCCI, and boards the night flight to Singapore en route to Australia, his deputy Ian Frazer, the man who has virtually been the coach’s shadow through the last 22 months, revealed that Tendulkar’s “anguish” may have had little to do with his boss’s final decision.

“Greg had already had time to take a long, hard look at the situation. And he seems to have realised that there was nothing left for him to give,” Frazer told The Indian Express.

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Fearing the cameras, slipping out of the back door of the Taj hotel, like Chappell has been doing over the last two days, Frazer stopped for a brief while to say, “Greg wouldn’t want to stay on if he thought he couldn’t add value to what he was doing. He probably realised that there was no strength left in him to continue. I don’t think Sachin’s comments had much to do with it.”

“Yes, Greg is a fighter. He is from a family of fighters. But even a fighter knows when his time has come,” said Frazer.

In fact, the story of Melbourne-based Frazer — he has played 17 first class games for Victoria as a left-handed batsman — is an interesting sub-plot to the Chappell drama, with the coach often expressing fears that those who were out to get at him would do so through his deputy.

Why? Chappell initially had planned to bring Frazer along as his official deputy but was advised by his “friends” in the BCCI that there was no provision for such a post. Bring him in later as a biomechanist, they advised, with his bio-data at the National Cricket Academy highlighting degrees in sports science and exercise, and integrative medicine from Melbourne.

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And this was what prompted the coach to tell the selection committee that first heard his Vision 2007 presentation that he would not need any assistance.

Expectedly, questions were soon raised over Frazer’s “backdoor entry” by some of the former players who were on that committee, including Sunil Gavaskar, and some current players who also started pointing fingers at his credentials.

For a defiant Chappell, however, Frazer remained a trusted helping hand, who soon started playing a key role in planning training sessions, and trawling books to come up with mottos and motivational themes for the team. Even if this was resented by some in the team, and outside, who began to question his qualifications. As months passed by, Frazer managed to strike the right note with some of the younger players, but was never quite able to get through to the core group.

Now, with Chappell on the verge of leaving India, Frazer has begun to pack his bags too. He has already vacated his room at the National Cricket Academy facility in Bangalore, and plans to fly out of the country on Monday. “If Greg thinks there is no point in staying on, he won’t. And that’s what happened,” said Frazer.