Guru Greg Consults for the Aussie Cricket Side

Australia have hired Greg Chappell as an assistant coach for their tour of India. Guru Greg is still hated in India, mainly for speaking his mind and being impatient with the rubbish that the press kept dishing out to him.

His time as the head coach of the Indian Cricket Team was a tumultous period with some rousing victories and some terrible defeats. He left in sad circumstances, unworthy of the great cricketer that he was in his playing days.

As this Indian Express editorial suggests, Chappell may have moved on, but some in India clearly haven't. This ridiculous editorial opines that Australia hiring Chappell amounts to a mind game! This India-Centric view that anything that happens in the world of cricket is primarily with reference to India is indicative of an unhealthy amount of hubris amongst some people who participate in Indian Cricket.

Australia are not "manic about mindgames". How about the simpler, more decent explanation, that they would like to be prepared as well as they can be, and feel that Greg Chappell with his close experience of India and the Indian team, can help their preperation?

In my view, that's a solid reason hire anybody, especially if you have the budget to do it. The irony of the Express editorial is that in issuing some sort of false warning, it falls prey to the same mindgames which it claims the Australians are playing! The justification given in the editorial is weak.

I would counter by asking what it is that anybody can teach Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, or Anil Kumble about playing anywhere in the world, that they don't already know? What can Gary Kirsten teach India's cricketers about playing in India? Besides, I have no idea what the IPL experience has to do with proper Test Cricket.

That this is much ado about nothing is evident from the closing line: "When a man once picked by India for acclimatisation to the Australian way is, in turn, picked by Australia to know the India way, cricket has to be at an interesting juncture." There is no great insight here. That statement as such is hollow and means absolutely nothing.

The fact that the Australians have hired Chappell, is in my view entirely unexceptional. I don't recall the Australians getting all twisted about India hiring Greg Chappell to coach them, or hiring Bruce Reid as a bowling consultant in Australia in 2003-04, or even hiring Chappell himself as a batting consultant in Australia in 2003-04.

Both Reid and Chappell proved to be very useful for India on that tour. Chappell might prove to be equally useful this time around, not least because, whatever any upstart might say about him, he was a truly great batsman in his day and obvious really knows his cricket.

You could also argue that the one thing that Chappell couldn't manage in India was the transition to the post-Ganguly era. Given that Chappell himself sees this as a transition period for Australia, there is a possibility that Chappell's questionable man-management skills might lead to some tactless handling of some situations by him, which may haunt Cricket Australia for this choice.  

If an Indian editorial suggested this, it would be a classic Australian style mindgame. But, as you can see, they haven't.

I actually think this appointment is as unremarkable as it is sound. Chappell has recently been appointed head of the Centre for Excellence in Brisbane. The current Australian Coach Tim Nielsen held this position before he became Head Coach of the Australian team. As such, Chappell and Nielsen are the two top Cricket coaches in Australia right now.

Given how important this series is, and given how so many Australian players have not toured India before, but have probably been to the Centre for Excellence, inviting Chappell to tour with the Australian team for this tour makes a lot of sense. Tim Nielsen toured with John Buchanan when Buchanan was coach.

This is the build-up though. It is true that the Australian press tries very hard to soften up visiting teams to Australia even before they take the field. This is something of an Australian tradition, which goes back at least 60 years if not more (Len Hutton and Colin Cowdrey have both written about Hutton's encounters with the Australian press when he led England to Australia for the 1954-55 Ashes).

 If the Indian press wants to do the same, they ought pursue such an enterprise seriously. Editorials like this one from the Indian Express are neither here nor there.