Sachin Tendulkar autobiography: Raining chappals on Chappell

It’s a heady mix, the joys and sorrows of cricket with some super popular jingoism and a fallen coach who tried his “modern” methods in an India steeped in class, caste and privilege. This is not to say other coaches didn’t bring modern ideas, they did but on realising the eternal Indian condition of worshipping and revering the ageing already venerated once-upon-a-time-match-winners, they must have rolled the laptop right back into the rucksack - forget its contents of modern gizmogiri – and get about “coaching”. Greg Chappell is the one who dissented and called the “horse” a donkey since an ass has longer ears and stands the way it does compared to strapping stallions strutting their stuff on the green or baggy green elsewhere.

Greg Chappell played cricket and quit it in January 1984 just six months or so after India won ODI spurs after its 1983 Prudential World Cup victory over the mighty West Indies thus promoting the cliché of the “glorious uncertainty” of cricket. So, he has seen the Indian teams playing the way they played Down Under in successive Tests and their preference for the fuller ball and their haste in fleeing the rising one. This is not to say individuals didn’t handle the pace and the bounce and carve exquisite innings for the joy of the listener at the other end of the radio. Cut to 2011, the Indian team won the World Cup in Mumbai under Gary Kirsten but if not for Chappell’s needling the stars to push themselves beyond ads and brand ambassadorships to get better, Gary may have ended up sorry, as sorry as the figure Chappell cuts in the media-led fusillade against Guru Greg currently on display on all news TV.

Australians are not very popular in India especially when they play cricket, remember Steve Waugh, Dean Jones and the other worthies who didn’t mind a li’l swearing on the side to add to their staple of competitive, aggressive cricket. After they retire, they attain demigod status, some for their charitable work and some for their charitable comments on Indian stars and stars-in-the-making. Remember India is the cricketing superpower, the combined United States and rich Europe of global cricket, the land of the IPL, the ads, the movie star girlfriends and the rest. The rest of the world’s cricketers flock to the mela that cricket has become in India with billionaires funding teams like the rich landlord supporting the pehelwan of the Indian village of yore.

This writer is not defending Greg Chappell here. Go on, have your Chappell-curry and eat it too. But it’s below the belt when cricketers take a snide turn at the fall guy in their autobiography. Or is the controversy nice pre-release publicity? It looks more than a coincidence. There’s a truism that all men continue to be adolescents all through their lives. Indian cricketers are proving no different. If Chappell said something uncharitable, grow up and take it in your stride and go on but no, not even the (Oh) God of Cricket can overcome this all-too human failure. Or his teammates rushing to thrust their swords oops words into willing microphones.

It’s almost like the Congress and the BJP in politics, if the Congress talks of the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, the BJP is quick to shout, “What about the victims of 1984?”

Chappell must be rolling his eyes somewhere and wondering about the fuss.