.jpg?type=hq)
Gregg Chappell, Sourav Gangauly, and Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma (Source: AFP)
Almost 20 years, six and a half months back from the time you’re reading this, Indian cricket witnessed a major coaching shift on May 19, 2005. It was the day when the former Australia great, Greg Chappell replaced the successful John Wright as the head coach of the Indian cricket team.
The fans, administrators, and all the other stakeholders of Indian cricket had some high hopes from Greg Chappell that he would take Indian cricket to new heights. Everyone expected that the former Aussie great’s mindset would carry the successful legacy of John Wright to its better version.
Cut to 19-20 years forward, a similar kind of excitement, hype and drama unfolded around the news and reports for Gautam Gambhir taking over as Team India’s head coach. He was also set to head a settled and successful team that brought joy of T20 World Cup win for Indian cricket fans and nurtured under the Indian batting legend, Rahul Dravid.
Here, I will take you to a journey of two cinematic phases of Indian cricket, which are like two different movies with different starcast, but the same outline of script that ended up horribly on both the occasions.
The autumn smells same melancholy after two decades
The backdrops, build-ups, and backings in the carnations of Greg Chappell and Gautam Gambhir are identical to each other. Even the background stories before their appointments on two different occasions had the same ‘echo of success’, courtesy of John Wright in early 2000s, under whom India played World Cup 2003 final and Rahul Dravid, who guided India to World Cup 2023 final exactly twenty years later.
Two time-frames with a distance of two decades holds a pattern of repetition in the coaching patterns of the Indian cricket team, be it under Greg Chappell or under Gautam Gambhir.
It can also be put in another way that ‘it’s a movie, in which shots change with the time lapse of 20 years, but the scenes resemble each other, even the similar frames and angles make them look like perfect deja-vu moments’.
India after WC 2007 Loss and India lost Test series against SA (Source: X)
What happens when the days of blossom start fading away and autumn starts taking over? the winds take a turn and everything starts changing eventually. Considering these two coaching eras of Greg and Gambhir the autumns of Indian cricket will not be an exaggeration. I am saying it because Indian cricket has had everything under Chappell-Gambhir eras, what an autumn holds, the melancholy, dejection, low spirits, miseries and what not.
One disturbed the settled unit that nurtured under Sourav Ganguly and John Wright, the other tried to impose himself and his decision on the well-performing group that grew under Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid. What happened to cost Indian cricket were the repercussions of this personification of stubbornness in Greg and Gambhir.
Eventually, their tactics, failed approaches and other decision-making blunders became the reason for autumn's arrival in Indian cricket on two different occasions. Both include embarrassing defeats, poor game plans and everything that took Team India down. So, the melancholy, misery and helplessness under the ongoing autumn under Gambhir seems to have the same smell that it used to have under Greg Chappell.
.jpg)
The testimonies of teared-apart tactics
After giving a literary point of view to two ‘drastic eras of decline’, it’s time to have a sequential look at some testimonies that speak volume about the teared-apart and shattered tactics implemented by Greg and Gambhir in their respective coaching tenures.
What happened with the star pacer Zaheer Khan in Chappell’s era is being done with the veteran pacer Mohammed Shami by the current coaching setup. The batting order getting disturbed, making players feel insecure, or forcefully turning the good bowling all-rounders to proper all-rounders and ruining their game were some of the techniques that used to be attributed solely to Greg Chappell a couple of years back.
But, it seems that Gambhir felt bad seeing Chappell alone with those tags and he decided to accompany the former Aussie great with the repeated execution of similarly failed, flawed, half-cooked and short-sighted tactics.
Greg Chappell initiated a rift with the then skipper Sourav Ganguly, the same guy who was keen to bring him as India’s head coach. Apart from that, Chappell was also an advocate of ‘no star culture’ in India cricket, the notion which also reflects clearly in Gambhir’s coaching approach and his statements in the press before becoming the coach.
Nothing has changed: Coach choosing captain to impose self-acclaimed policies
Speaking of rift with the captain like Chappell had, Gambhir didn’t come up with a clearly opposing attitude to former India skipper Rohit Sharma, who was initially leading India under Gambhir’s coaching, but cleverly weaved a trap to push senior players away from the side. It can be attributed to the abrupt Test retirements announced by two modern-day greats, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma even after showing their interest to play in the Test series against England earlier this year.
The way Greg wanted a new captain to replace Ganguly at that time is a same story with changed faces of Gautam Gambhir and his willingness to have a young skipper across all formats. Having a less-experienced or less straight-forward individual as captain is something every coach would want to dictate the team on his own terms and disguise it as captain’s call whenever the team fails.
In the Chappell era, it was Rahul Dravid who replaced Ganguly as captain and in Gambhir’s tenure, Shubman Gill replaced the veteran skipper Rohit Sharma as captain in Tests and ODIs. India faced a drastic and embarrassing exit in the ODI World Cup 2007 under Chappell’s coaching and being miserable from invincible in home Tests under Gambhir’s leadership are two different shots, with different faces, but the same kind of scenes and sequences.
The future is already smelling like that. It will not be a surprise if the same fate repeats for India after 20 years in the ODI World Cup 2027 in Gambhir’s coaching era. There are high chances that the Men in Blue might go to the ODI World Cup 2027 with the same kind of disturbed unit they had two decades ago in World Cup 2007.
Conclusion: Who will be the next Dhoni-Kirsten duo to complete this deja-vu?
After dissecting all the aspects of similarities and resemblances between the coaching techniques of Greg Chappell and Gautam Gambhir. There comes a point where all disagreements between cricket analysts will come to an end and it is the fact that, ‘the current coaching setup will also leave the Indian team divided, in rifts, and bruised with defeats like Chappell left’.
So, this also comes with a ‘food for thought’ that, ‘who will resemble the duo of former legendary India captain MS Dhoni and World Cup-winning coach Garry Kirsten to revive Indian cricket’?
The answer to this question will be in the interests of all the stakeholders in Indian cricket. Besides that, It also becomes necessary to complete the cycle of this deja-vu happening 20 years apart in two different timelines.
