For some reasons Indian cricket board is always biased towards hiring  foreign coaches , more specifically the whites. The primary reason is that Indian coaches are like Ghar ka Murgi Daal Barabar and are usually not taken seriously as a total coach by our own players. They could be a good batting coach, bowling coach, fielding coach but are never considered to be a total coach, most of the time very rightly so. Coaches like Greg Chappel or John Wright had an edge because they could provide a holistic view of the game and its preparations. For example, their communication skill – being confident and aggressive, ability to handle media , being a role model as a cricketer themselves ,ability to command respect  through their appearance and personality , deep understanding of the nuances of preparations – batting/ bowling /fielding coaching ,  knowledge of physical/fitness  training and physiotherapy , psychological counseling,  sports medicine,  strategic and statistical understanding ,  use of new technology  and so on. They have the advantage of their upbringing and  growing up  in a  very advanced  sporting system of developed countries for them  to grow as a total  coach  with a very  holistic understanding that Madanlals and Mohindar Amarnaths in India can not certainly match.

I made a mistake however in calling the whites total coach. In India, a coach can be a total coach only when he becomes a mentor too. Remember Dronacharya? Eklavya did not even hesitate to cut his finger for  Gurudakshina at the cost of his skill and profession. In Indian psychology ,coaching cannot be restricted to contractual obligations at the physical plane alone. Coaches are Gurus  and that heart to heart bond between a coach and the players are extremely important  for the team to succeed. After all  it is the team and not the coach that need to perform on the field. This is where  Greg Chappel  , his astute understanding of the game and world class supporting team  failed . Inspite of making a huge investment on Greg and his supporting  team, Greg’s coaching period has been marred with controversies  like never before and except some initial success, it witnessed the worst phase of Indian cricket.

Greg never had respect for the Indian system or the players. I have never seen a coach so racist . History of white –brown-black  racism did not end with Gandhi ,King or Rossa Park’s struggle. Can Greg , now an assistant  coach of the visiting Australlian team treat the Australlians the same way he treated the Indian players ? Mathew Hayden scored only 42 runs in the last  five innings. Will he now show him the door the way he showed it to Ganguly ? Will he dare ask Ricky Ponting to quit captaincy for his poor forms and performance ( except the recent century ) the way he did it to Ganguly ? I have not seen him experimenting with the batting order of the team either whereas during his coaching,  no Indian player was certain about his batting positions that kept changing  with every match for the entire period he coached India. He did not even spare Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin is not a white and therefore how does he deserve to hold all those records? This haunted Greg badly.  Greg  shamelessly went to the extent to show Sachin’s achievements in poor light saying that Ponting  soon would break all records set by Sachin.Zaheer , still India’s ace bowler was unduly dropped by him saying he was unfit !

Had I been Greg Chappel, I would not have coached Australia against team India – after all the great fortunes  that Greg made during his India stint and there is a word called Ethics in English dictionary. But Greg is Greg . A great professional ! His prime mandate this time  is to share all the facts and weaknesses of Indian team so that Australlia can strike better ! May be this is called professionalism! Emotion has no room at all .

This is how the white coaches always  have been and this is how the Indian cricket board officials have been ( except Jagmohan Dalmiya ) since the genes of  years of slavery take long time to come out of it and we shamelessly keep wagging our tongue before the  so called professional white coaches . The other white coaches John Wright  and Garry Kirsten  may not have been as vocal and demonstrative as Greg but deep inside they harbor the same sentiment, why express it when you can make cool bucks as long as things go fine.

But it is time for team India to pay the proper  Gurudakshina to Greg . And this series is the last chance for the so called fab four to pay it back completely.
How ?

1. The world record of Sachin , crossing 12000 runs ,being the highest test run scorer
2. Unbelievable form of Ganguly – a century in the second test and  being the total highest scorer for India in the first test and thus promising  a grand retirement 
3. Great performance of all the fab four – setting to rest all the debates of seniors versus juniors – an unhealthy debate started by Greg. Isn’t it form and performance that matters?

4.Lion hearted bowling  from Zaheer on the fifth day .
5. Team India wins by 320 runs !

Did they now cut the finger of Guru Greg  ?  Reversed Eklavya act  ?  They now ring the bell  ending Australlia’s dominance in world cricket. What does guru Greg  has to say now ?

BCCI has emerged to be the richest sports organization in the world today. A country of billion people, with more and more corporate and entrepreneurial involvement in  sports, commercialization of cricket, with advanced cricketing framework being in place and with more and more children coming forward to take cricket as their passion, it is not very far that Indian team has arrived to rule the world  for a very very long time – the so called white dominance in cricket will be the things of the past. The new saga of Indian cricket  began with Ganguly’s taking off the shirt in Lord’s balcony – looking opponents in their eyes , sledging for sledging , shaking off the age old fear  we used to witness against Pakistan , marking a clear departure from the gentleman but timid  style of the Gavaskar’s  and previous era.  The  genre of Amit Mishras, Gautam Gambhirs, Dhonis, Harbhajans   shall  now orchestrate the new calypso – the Greg Chappels will  be lost in history.