As Irfan Pathan announced his retirement from all forms of cricket a few days back, he further added that blaming former India coach Greg Chappell for his downfall was all a ‘cover-up’ and that he never lost his swing in bowling. However, Greg Chappell himself has said that he enjoyed working with the speedster of India, citing him “courageous and selfless”.

“Irfan was happy to play whatever role the team required. He was both courageous and selfless,” Chappell told TOI.

“Irfan proved that he was a very capable all-rounder. Apart from what he did in limited overs cricket, he very nearly scored a Test century (93 vs Sri Lanka at Feroz Shah Kotla). His swing bowling was very good, the highlight for me being his hat-trick in the first over of a Test match against Pakistan in Karachi,” he added.

However, the pacer’s stint batting higher in the playing order coincided with Chappell being the head coach of the Indian team then and under Rahul Dravid’s captaincy, and he had earlier expressed also that was the only time he got a chance to prove his batting ability as well.

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“All these discussions – people talking about Greg Chappell they are just covering up. (The discussion that) Irfan was not interested, it was coming from somewhere. All the aura they made that Irfan lost his swing, people need to understand, that you are not going to get the same kind of swing that you get in 10 overs. I was still getting the swing,” Irfan Pathan had earlier told PTI.

“People talk about my performance, but my job was different. I was given job to contain because I was bowling first change. I had been told this is your job. I remember getting dropped after winning the game in Sri Lanka in 2008, who gets dropped after winning the game for the country without any reason?” he concluded.