Wrong people were at the helm of Indian cricket during 2007 World Cup: Harbhajan Singh slams Greg Chappell
Greg Chappell was the Indian coach between 2005 and 2007. He was sacked after the World Cup.
A lot happened in Indian cricket between 2005 and 2007. A lot of things went wrong building up to the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 and it exploded after India’s sudden exit in the first round. With all the stars in that lineup, it is still surprising how did the 2007 World Cup squad fail to qualify till the super eight stages.
A lot of blame was given to the coach of that team, Greg Chappell. The former Australian batsman, who was one of the greatest of his time had to take the blame for the performance and was sacked right after the World Cup. Harbhajan Singh, a key member of that side opened up about the distressful time in Indian cricket. During an interview with Aakash Chopra for his YouTube channel, Bhajji talked about the things which transpired into the disappointment of 2007.
50-over World Cup in 2007 has to be the lowest point of my career: Harbhajan Singh
In the words of the Indian spinner, the Aussie had created an environment that wasn’t good. Harbhajan revealed that Chappell’s motive as a coach wasn’t clear.
“A lot had happened before that. When Greg Chappell came as the coach of our side, he disrupted the entire team, no one knows what was his motive when he came to coach us, no one knows how to disrupt a solid team better than him, he used to do whatever he wanted. The press wrote what he wanted, people did what he wanted,” Harbhajan Singh said.
The off-spinner from Punjab described the 2007 World Cup as the lowest point in his career. Harbhajan even revealed that he wanted to leave the team because of Chappell being at the coach’s position.
“2007 50-over World Cup has to be the lowest point of my career, I thought we are going through such a difficult time and I also thought that maybe it is not right time to play for India, wrong people were at the helm of Indian cricket. Who is Greg Chappell and what is he trying to do. Greg Chappell had a divide and rule policy, he used to do such things,” Harbhajan added.
The spinner went on to say that the Indian team was quite strong in that World Cup. In 2003 a similar team under Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy had reached the finals in 2003 World Cup. The 2007 squad had Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar, Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Rahul Dravid, Harbhajan, Zaheer Khan, and many other stars.
“We had a solid team for the 2007 50-over World Cup, we were just not able to perform as no one was in the right frame of mind, no one trusted each other, when the team is not happy then the results do not go your way. We lost to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, they were not that big teams, it was not like we lost to Australia or South Africa. We were a very strong team,” Turbanator went on to add.
India lost their group matches to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This led to them getting knocked out. That 2007 World Cup still remains a haunting memory for many cricket fans.
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