With good players, you prefer to give them a game too many: Greg Chappell
No team is ever a finished article, you’re always looking to improve it. But when you get the superstars, you want them to go as long as they can, said Chappell
Adelaide: It was in June 2005 that Greg Chappell took over as India coach. He arrived to try and revive a jaded team and ended up presiding over one of the most tumultuous eras of Indian cricket. In the two years that he was in charge of the team — the scraps with the seniors, the game of pool in Zimbabwe, the leaked email and the punch at the airport were only the tip of a never-ending barrage of stories that featured on the front pages of newspapers back then.
Chappell wanted change and he wanted it on his own terms. Had he got the seniors over to his side (as John Wright and Gary Kirsten did), he might have succeeded in giving Indian a new direction. But instead, he only succeeded in pushing some youngsters into India’s white-ball system and introducing the word, ‘process’ into the Indian lexicon. Rahul Dravid benefitted from it, as did Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli.
When Chappell had taken over, India had a bunch of ageing superstars staring at a mid-career crisis. They either needed to up their game (as some of them eventually did) or give way to younger players. This called for tough words and not everyone liked what was said or how it was said.
But now, as the Indian team sits on the cusp of another transition, the 76-year-old Chappell is perhaps more understanding of the challenge that change can sometimes represent.
“You know yourself whether you are at your peak or not, but they obviously love playing the game, they want to play it as long as they can and have every reason every right to want to go as long as they can that’s why you need good robust selection policies and selection panels to make those tough decisions,” said Chappell to reporters at the Adelaide Oval. “It’s not up to the players necessarily to make those decisions, they might want to make that decision but it’s a well-paid job who’s going to walk away from it? Someone else has to make that decision. That’s why you need robust selection panels and policies.”
And these conversations are perhaps the trickiest part of being a selector. Kohli didn’t like it when the selectors overruled him to name Rohit captain in all white-ball formats for India. Wriddhiman Saha didn’t like it when Rahul Dravid told him they were going to look at someone younger. Someone, somewhere is always hurt.
“Yeah, they can be [tough],” said Chappell. “Depends on the relationships between the various people in the room, but we all go through it, everyone that plays at that level. I mean you’ll have your ups and downs as a player. With good players you prefer to give them a game too many than a game too few. So it’s always tough to get that balance.”
He added: “No cricket team is ever a finished article, you’re always looking at ways that you might improve it so you’re constantly bringing players in, bringing players out. But when you get the superstars, you want them to go as long as they possibly can. So occasionally you might let them go a bit too long. I don’t think anyone wants to rush it.”
There is, of course, a lot of talk about how the hand-eye co-ordination of some of the older players starts deteriorating past a certain age. But Chappell disagreed: “I don’t think the player’s hand-eye coordination drops off at this age. I think it’s more just your mental capacity, your ability to be able to focus and concentrate that hard probably drops off as you get a bit older. I don’t buy into the argument that the hand-eye coordination goes, the mind goes.
“You get to the stage where you don’t want to, it’s just that you can’t give it the single-minded focus that you did when you were younger. Your life changes, you get married, you have families, all of a sudden you’ve got other things that are coming into that mental space that wasn’t happening before and therefore you finish up with just less of that space to be able to put in that effort.”
It takes a huge effort to find success at the international level and then to stay there and perform consistently takes even more out of the player. Sometimes, a realigning of goals does the trick.
“I mean what it takes to make runs at this level, take wickets to this level, is huge and you’ve only got to be off that much and that’s enough. But you know it might be a conversation with a mentor or a coach or a friend that sort of reminds you of what you need to think about.”
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