Good Riddance Greg

The inevitable just happened. Greg Chappell resigned as the coach of the Indian cricket team. Well It was going to happen anyway, His head had to be the first to roll, as the aftermath of our pathetic performance in the World cup.

In my humble opinion, I'm pretty happy that this happened. I hated the man anyway. He never seemed to gel with the players in the dressing room. Spat with Ganguly, Spat with Tendulkar, Emails, SMS's, he was more a character of a Bollywood script than he was a cricket coach. At this point I believe he is one of the most hated man on the face of the planet, coming close to George Bush :P.

If you look at his coaching, it yielded mixed results. We won a Test series in the Caribbean after 35 years, made a world record of 17 continuous successful chases, won 35, lost 27 of the 65 ODI's played under his coaching. In Tests it was slightly better, We won 7, Drew 7, and lost 4 of the test matches. But We also had amazing lows, in 14 out of 17 away games, We failed to bat out complete 50 overs, Got whitewashed in South Africa, Lost the ODI's in West Indies, Lost in malaysia, got kicked out of the Champions trophy and world cup in the very first stages.

But performance put aside, I hated the man's guts because of his inability to gel the players into a unit. History tells us that its always a United team which goes all the way. A team with so many spats and controversies just cannot make it. The role of a coach should be considered here. A player who comes to the highest level, through the domestic circuit, obviously has perfected his technique, eliminated any flaws or worked his way around them. He doesn't need to be taught how to bat or bowl. The role of a coach is more to work out strategies, plans, basically act as the head of the think tank, and to keep the morale boosted, i.e. to act as a psychologist.

He obviously failed to do so. And it lead to a billion dreams being shattered. Good riddance Chappell. Just feel lucky, it was Woolmer, not you, in that fateful hotel room in Jamaica that night.