Sachin down, Chappell out

Maybe, it was Sachin Tendulkar’s open defiance that finally did it. Maybe, it was the mind-numbing pressure during India’s World Cup tailspin, when he feared that “Sachin and Sourav were circling over Indian cricket (with Rahul on his knees) waiting for the captaincy”. Maybe, it was a gentle nudge from the top bosses of the BCCI.

But Chappell’s decision was actually the climax of a script gone horribly wrong over the last 10 months, from the time he confessed during India’s last tour of the West Indies in May-June 2006 that, “with this team, we will never win the World Cup.”

That was also the time when the Chappellway had begun to face the first signs of resistance from a section of the players who did not quite relish the coach’s attempts at total control, who felt left out of the loop as the coach began to attempt an ambitious overhaul of the team, the “process” of fast-tracking youngsters into the final XI.

That was also the time when Chappell, aware of the rumblings within, started seeing conspiracies all around, confiding that players like Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag were being controlled from outside by his “nemesis,” the man who got him to India in the first place, Sourav Ganguly.

That was also the time when the Indian dressing room first started frosting over. It was a bizarre situation that left chartered accountant Ravi Savant, who managed that team, quite bewildered: “I did not see a single one of them, except maybe Dravid, walk up to him with a doubt or for a discussion.

And when he spoke in the dressing room, either someone would be looking away, or talking among themselves or packing their kit bags.”

This, looking back, was the start of the great divide – Chappell vs Sehwag and Harbhajan, then Chappell vs Tendulkar and Zaheer Khan, and of course, the big one that started it all, Chappell vs Ganguly.

It was a divide that widened when India’s famous batsmen started flopping again and again, when Chappell’s youngsters — Suresh Raina, RP Singh — failed to grab their chances, when the sceptical Dilip Vengsarkar took over as chief selector from Chappellway fan Kiran More with just six months to go for the World Cup.

It was a divide that finally ended with that phone call this afternoon to BCCI president Sharad Pawar. And this line: “Today I informed the President of the BCCI that I would not seek an extension to my contract to coach the Indian cricket team for family and personal reasons.”

So how will Team India remember the Australian legend’s 22 months with Indian cricket? Rahul Dravid would call him the “greatest cricketing brain around”, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan would look back at man who had backed them all the way, the “magarmach”, the crocodile with a “steel mind” who never wavered under pressure.

But what the rest of India’s World Cup 15 thought of him finally spelt the end of Chappell. For them, including Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly,

Chappell was a divisive force, who ignored the widening rift within the team, who badmouthed them in private, who refused to own up for the team’s failures, who leaked stories about them.

Chappell would, of course, beg to differ. He would say that he was caught between a defiant group of fading stars and a raw bunch of youngsters who were not really ready to take over. He would also list out a string of disappointments.

During the Sri Lankan tour of August, he thought he had convinced Sehwag to drop down in the middle order but later found that the opener had backtracked; during the South Africa tour this year, he let loose a private tirade against Ganguly only to find that the Bengal left-hander had been named to join the squad for the Tests; during the World Cup, he felt that the seniors were not giving their 100 per cent for the team only to find his worse fears come true against Bangladesh.

And now this: with a few days to go for the BCCI’s much-hyped performance review meeting, a rash of source-based reports break out, saying Chappell has pinned all the blame for India’s disaster on the senior players, even calling them a “mafia,”. Two days later, Tendulkar tells the world he is hurt that the coach questioned his attitude.

“I am currently out of the office for some time. Don’t expect to get a reply any time soon. If you are from the media it is unlikely that I will have time to do any interviews or chats in the foreseeable future. Thank you to all of you for your patience and persistence over the past 22 months and, for a change, I will enjoy reading your articles or watching your channels with a dispassionate view,” wrote Chappell this afternoon.

Then, in a press release, he rubbed it in: “I am grateful to the players with whom I have worked in this time for the challenges that they presented me with and which I tried to meet in a professional, methodical and interesting way in the interests of the team and the individual.”

Yes, Tendulkar may have finally got rid of the one man who was determined to cut his sagging career short by at least a couple of years. Yes, Ganguly may have had the last laugh. But as Dravid confided last week, if we revisit Chappell’s ideas once the noise is all over, we might find that he did have a point or two, after all.