It was not easy to be a renowned Indian cricketer: Greg Chappell

Former Australian great Greg Chappell, who had a coaching stint with the Indian team for two years said that coaching Indian team was a “bit more complicated” than he would have expected.

“It was perhaps a little bit more complicated than anyone could have imagined. There were so many layers to life in India, let alone cricket. That was pretty hard to expect anyone to master, particularly an outsider,” Chappell told ESPN Cricinfo in an interview.

He doesn’t share a good stint with some of the senior Indian players, especially the Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly, while he was coaching. “Being with the Indian cricket team was what it must have been like travelling with the Beatles. It was remarkable the way they were feted around the country wherever they went. Big crowds gathered at airports. The whole airport would come to a standstill,” he said.

Also Read – I don’t put no wicket where bowler will kill the batsmen: Trinidad Curator

“To see it from the inside and to understand some of the pressures on the players. It wasn’t an easy thing to be an Indian cricketer, especially a renowned Indian cricketer. The expectations, the interruptions to their day-to-day lives, and the restrictions on their ability to move freely – I marvelled at the way they managed to absorb all of that and just get on with it,” Chappell explained the pressures of being an Indian cricketer.

“The one that I coached had more depth in talent. There was a lot of talent in the teams we played against in the top half a dozen players, but then it dropped away a bit. More from an experience and a belief point of view rather than a lack of talent,” he said.

“The Indian teams that I coached, on paper, had one of the best batting line-ups that any Test team could boast. Not many that outshone it as far as talent was concerned. The depth of talent in that group was extraordinary,” he added.

Also Read – Ishant Sharma urges young India to secure No.1 Test ranking

The 68-year-old said that they don’t have got the best out of the group, which had some of the legendary names in the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and much more. “I don’t know that they got the best out of the group that they had. Other teams probably got more out of the talent they had,” he said.

“There are a number of reasons for that. Partly because they didn’t have the bowling attack to make the most of that batting line-up. Away from India, it didn’t do as well as it probably should have done,” he concluded.