Greg Chappell’s man management skills absolutely zero: Virender Sehwag

Former Indian coach Greg Chappell is a villain of Indian cricket. It is no secret. When former batsman Virender Sehwag comes out in criticism of Chappell, then you know that it is far from a joke. The 37-year old who is currently serving as a mentor for the Kings XI Punjab has lashed out at the former Aussie captain.

Speaking about Chappell, Sehwag was quoted saying, “If you talk of Greg Chappell’s cricketing knowledge, it’s superb. But when it came to man management, absolutely zero,” said Sehwag. “A coach should realise which of his players are giving him the best performance in matches, and then how he should handle them, how much time should be given to them, the need to give them their space. In international cricket there is no need for a coach; you need a friend who can manage you correctly. But with Chappell, it proved the other way around. He was keen to change my footwork.”

Sehwag backed up his claims with an illustration from the West Indies tour in 2006.

“We were in St Lucia, and during practice one day he came to me and told me to stretch my front foot to the maximum as that would impact my game better. I played a few shots and told him that I wasn’t comfortable doing that because I had never stretched that much in my career. I don’t do it during matches, so perhaps this isn’t worth my effort in practice. In turn, he got angry and said ‘you have to do it, you have to do it, I’m telling you to do it’,” revealed Sehwag.

“Things got heated between us and Rahul Dravid intervened and told me that if the coach is doing it, then I should do it and complete the formality. Then I did it a little bit. Then he [Chappell] said to me ‘Batting in your style, you’re not able to score runs’. To which I said ‘OK, then if I don’t score runs, you will drop me’. The conversation ended there and we went our separate ways.”

“I came into the dressing room and told him ‘it doesn’t matter if my feet move or not, I will score runs and I’ve done that.’ He just kept quiet,” said Sehwag.

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