In the history of ODI World Cups, rarely has an edition turned out to be as poor as the 2007 edition in West Indies. India were the runners-up of the 2003 edition and were expected to do well in 2007 too. However, what happened was exact opposite. India could not go past the initial stage from a group that had Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bermuda. India could win only one game against Bermuda and were knocked out. Greg Chappell was the coach in that edition and former India player Robin Uthappa said that the environment of the team was not not good.
“Us team ka mahool bahut kharab tha (The environment of that team was very bad). What I like about cricket the most is that there is a magic in making 15 stars play and work towards one direction. At the ODI World Cup, an Aussies was out coach.
“As a youngster, Greg Chappell was very good to me. I just entered the team. I was young, and he used to back youngsters. As a 20-year-old kid, with a dream was to play for India, win for India, hopefully one World Cup I will win for India,” said Uthappa on Lallantop.
“When you get that opportunity to play for the country, you feel like boss. You don’t need anything else. I will give everything for my team. I played with that mindset.”
Uthappa said that Chappell had an agenda driven mode of operation during his time with the Indian cricket team.
“It think it was an agenda driven thing. He was coaching with an Aussie mindset, saying, ‘This is how we do things in Australia. ‘ I don’t think he ever respected Indian culture. He came in and tried to bring the Australian culture. The environment of that team was very bad.
“It was during the Greg Chappell era when strength training was introduced. In Australia, it already existed. Greg Chappell saw that missing in India. Fitness was not the way of life. He was trying to bring in change.
“At that point, he found resistance from the seniors. They were not used to the fact that here is a guy coming and imposing things on us without showing us the basis respect that is shown,” he added.
“He also had a bad habit of leaking information when things didn’t go according to his plans. That didn’t run well with the players. He leaked dressing room information,” he added.
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