Greg Chappell has opened up about his days as the head coach of the Indian team. He made shocking revelations about former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly, who carved Chappell’s path as the coach back then.

Chappell threw light upon his two years as the head coach of India and alleged that Sourav Ganguly wasn’t keen to work hard on his game as a player and only wanted to be in the side as a captain.

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Ganguly and Chappell had a sore relation since then. The things got ugly with the time and Ganguly lost the captaincy of India and eventually got dropped from the team. Rahul Dravid was named the captain back then.

“Ganguly was the one who approached me about coaching India. I had other approaches but I decided that since John Buchanan was coaching Australia, I would love to coach the most populous, fanatical cricket country in the world, and that opportunity came about because Sourav, who was the captain, made sure that I did,” said Chappell on the Cricket Life Stories podcast.

“The two years in India were challenging on every front. The expectations were ridiculous. Some of the issues were around Sourav (Ganguly) being captain.

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“He didn’t particularly want to work hard. He didn’t want to improve his cricket. He just wanted to be in the team as captain, so that he could control things.”

It was not only Ganguly who had issues with Chappell. Other players of the team were also reportedly disapproved of Chappell’s method of coaching. The tussle between players and the coach increase to an extend that Chappell denied renewing his contract after India registered an early exit from the World Cup 2007.

“Dravid was really invested in India becoming the best team in the world. Sadly, not everyone in the team had the same feeling. They would rather concentrate on being in the team. There was some resistance from some of the senior players because some of them were coming to the end of their careers. When Sourav got dropped from the team, we had a lot of attention from the players, because they realized if he can go, anyone can go,” added Chappell.

“We had a great 12 months, but then the resistance got too much, Ganguly came back into the team. The message from the players was loud and clear ‘We don’t want change.’ Even though the board offered me a new contract, I decided that I did not need that kind of stress.”