Greg Chappell claims India were not interested in Test series against Australia

Greg Chappell claims India were not interested in Test series against Australia

Former Australian cricketer Greg Chappell claimed that India were not interested in taking responsibility in the four match Test series against Australia, before the start of the One Day International (ODI) triangular competition, which included Sri Lanka
as the third team.

Chappell, who also remained head coach of India, said, "It was obvious from the start of the tour that the Indians weren’t really interested in Test cricket. After the Australians showed that they were going to be a formidable foe, I was very disappointed
with the Indians. And having worked with many of them and having been in the dressing room with them, Test cricket was too hard for most of them. They can only make a lot of money playing 20-over cricket. Fifty-over cricket they can sort of put up with."

India were outplayed in the longest version of the game, losing the series 0-4. They were unable to challenge the opposition in all those matches, as all big guns such as Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Gautam Gambhir and
skipper MS Dhoni failed to fire.

According to Chappell, the Men in Blue were not mentally prepared to face the Aussies, thus got whitewashed in the series. They also suffered similar humiliation against England, after the ICC World Cup 2011.

Dhoni and his men were confident of taking on the Poms, but failed to win a single game on the entire tour. They did manage to win a few limited-over games in Australia, but were unable to qualify for the finals.

However, Chappell believes that India are still a good side when it comes to limited-over cricket, but they need to lift their game in the longest format. He went onto say that all Subcontinent teams have a similar problem, when it comes to playing
Test cricket.

The 63-year-old added, "Test cricket for a lot of, not only India, a lot of subcontinent teams, I think it’s pretty tough. And the challenge for Test cricket is, without the sort of grounding that we [Australians] had as kids, Test cricket is
too hard. It’s very demanding mentally, physically and emotionally."

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Posted by Waqar Masood on Mar 7 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry