Stop the soap opera - Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly both should survive, BCCI should go for mismanagement and playing politics with players and betting markets
Sudhir Chadda
Sep. 27, 2005

The soap opera is on. International media is making fun of Indian cricket and cricket control board of India – BCCI. The payers are also stock of fun in the international media. It is time to sack and punish the BCCI for mismanagement and playing politics with players and betting markets.

The issue is not about Sourav Ganguly. The BCCI is politicking for along time and playing tricks with players, internal division between different groups and harnessing power as well as making money in the sideline.

At the centre of a raging controversy over his spat with coach Greg Chappell, Sourav Ganguly on Monday faced a demand for his resignation from the post as a BCCI committee meets here on Tuesday to discuss threadbare the Australian's e-mail levelling various charges against the Indian captain. The rumblings in Indian cricket on Monday found an echo in the Australian and English media, which largely appeared to be on the side of coach Greg Chappell in his row with skipper Sourav Ganguly.

‘Epic power struggle’ and ‘Indian soap opera’ were some of the phrases used to describe the unprecedented face off between ‘the two most important figures in India’s dressing room’.

The BBC said in a report that the row was more than an epic power struggle, “it is also a drama of soap opera proportions, played out before the public’s gaze”.

“When a captain claims his coach asked him to step down, as it happened in Zimbabwe recently, there are bound to be repercussions. It could have been settled privately, but it became a matter of public consumption when Ganguly went to the Indian press, who went to town on the disclosure,” it wrote.

In a report titled ‘Chappell, Ganguly caught in subcontinental divide’, the Sydney Morning Herald said the spat had stemmed from the Australian legend “telling India’s notoriously stubborn captain he should be sacked in a one-on-one meeting that Chappell hoped would forever be kept out of the public arena”.

“Having this year become the coach of India--one of the most closely scrutinised jobs in world cricket--Chappell knew controversy would arise at some stage. He didn’t have to wait long,” it said.

He’s on his first tour, of Zimbabwe, and already he’s embroiled in a falling-out that will cost either the coach or the captain his job, the Sydney Morning Herald report said.

The Guardian, treading a cautious path, said, “India’s captain has been depicted by his coach as a political manipulator out to preserve his own career in a leaked email to the Indian board”.

Chappell’s withering condemnation of Ganguly is a tacit request for his sacking and has caused effigies of the Australian to be burned in Ganguly’s stronghold of Kolkata.

The BBC said Ganguly enjoyed the backing of the most powerful man in sub continental cricket, Jagmohan Dalmiya, the immensely well-connected former board president.

“Ganguly is India’s most successful Test captain by number of victories and his captaincy has endured beyond the term of India’s last coach John Wright, another foreigner. But Chappell is also a heavyweight figure. A former captain of Australia with a scoring record superior to Ganguly’s, Chappell is very comfortable in his own skin,” it said.

Full text of Chappell's e-mail to BCCI
Media Release
The full text of the e-mail Indian cricket coach Greg Chappell sent to the Board of Control for Cricket in India...
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