Sourav Ganguly was warned by Ian Chappell about the negative impact of hiring his brother Greg as the head of Indian team. Sunil Gavaskar, too, was not in favor to hire Greg Chappell but it was Ganguly, who backed him to his appointment. But now Ganguly, himself, feels that it was the worst decision of his professional career.

Ganguly was eager to taste success Down Under and thought an Aussie can help him to achieve this mission. He got in touch with Chappell as he thought he “would be the best person” to help him in his mission. “In our previous meetings he had impressed me with his deep cricketing knowledge,” Ganguly writes in his autobiography “A Century is Not Enough”.

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After 2003 when question raised who can be the successor of John Wright, Ganguly took Chappell’s name in flash.

“I thought Greg Chappell would be the best person to take us to the number one slot from the challenger’s position. I had conveyed my personal choice to Mr (Jagmohan) Dalmiya when they were looking for a new Indian coach,” the book reveals.

“A few people advised me against this move. Sunil Gavaskar was one of them. ‘Sourav, think about it. With him around, you might have problems in running the team. His past coaching record is not spectacular, he told me.”

He says Dalmiya also called one morning and asked him to come to his house for an urgent discussion. “He shared in confidence that even his brother Ian thought Greg might not be the right choice for India. Well, I decided to ignore all these warnings and follow my instincts,” Ganguly writes. “The rest, as they say, is history. But then that’s life. Some scripts go your way, like my tour of Australia, and some don’t, like the Greg chapter. I conquered the country but not one of its citizens.”

Ganguly’s book further reads “This (the year 2005) remains the most turbulent chapter of my life. Not only was my captaincy suddenly taken away for no reason but I was also dropped as a player. I feel angry even as I write this. What happened was unthinkable. Unacceptable. Unforgivable.”

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“History hasn’t recorded many instances of a winning captain being dropped so unceremoniously, that too after scoring a hundred in the last Test series. In Indian cricket, there are no such parallels and I doubt whether there will ever be. So, Mr. Gregory Stephen Chappell and the selection committee led by Kiran More have indeed put me in august company.”