Ian had doubts over Greg’s choice as Team India coach: Ganguly

TIL Desk Sports/ Even brother Ian Chappell was not very positive about Greg Chappell taking over as Team India coach in 2005 and so was Sunil Gavaskar but Sourav Ganguly says he decided to ignore all these warnings and follow his instincts on the appointment.

In fact, Ganguly was in awe of Chappell prior to his appointment and even embarked on a secret trip to Australia in 2003 before the team was to tour that country for doing an exhaustive recce of the grounds and preparing himself and his teammates.

He got in touch with Chappell as he thought he “would be the best person” to help him in his mission. “In our previous meetings he had impressed me with his deep cricketing knowledge,” Ganguly writes in his autobiography “A Century is Not Enough”.

But little did Ganguly know then that this association was going to be one of the most controversial of that era. On Greg’s appointment, the former Team India skipper says that when there was discussion in 2004 on who could succeed John Wright as the coach, Chappell’s name flashed in his mind first.