Sehwag slammed Greg Chappell’s man management skill
Apr 11, 2016 at 6:27 PM
Former Indian destructive opener Virender Sehwag slammed former Indian coach Greg Chappell. Sehwag revealed how he faced difficulties under the Chappell’s coaching in the Indian team.
Recently Sehwag shared some of his international career’s stories in the new web show “What The Duck”. When he was asked about his experience with Greg Chappell in the Indian team, Sehwag revealed, “If you talk of Greg Chappell’s cricketing knowledge, it’s superb. But when it came to man management, absolutely zero. A coach should realize 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.”
After that, Sehwag gave an example of it. During India’s tour of West Indies in 2006, Chappell approached him during the nets session just a day before the second Test match. Sehwag said, “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’.”
Sehwag added, “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.”
On the next day, at the lunch break on day one of the second Test at Beausejour Stadium (St. Lucia), Sehwag went into the dressing room with unbeaten on 99 from 75 balls. “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,” Sehwag concluded.