Indians cannot be leaders, it's in their culture: Chappell

Adelaide: In a vicious attack on Indian culture and Indian cricket team, Greg Chappell today said that the side lacked leaders because parents, school teachers and coaches made all the decisions in the Indian system. “The (Indian) culture is very different, it’s not a team culture. They lack leaders in the team because they are not trained to be leaders. From an early age, their parents make all the decisions, their schoolteachers make their decisions, their cricket coaches make the decisions,” Chappell said. “The culture of India is such that, if you put your head above the parapet someone will shoot it. Knock your head off. So they learn to keep their head down and not take responsibility.” [caption id=“attachment_237975” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Greg Chappell . Reuters”]  [/caption] “The Poms (British) taught them really well to keep their head down. For if someone was deemed to be responsible, they’d get punished. So the Indians have learned to avoid responsibility. So before taking responsibility for any decisions, they prefer not to,” Chappell was quoted as saying by cricinfo at a promotional event for his book Fierce Focus. Chappell said that Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was an exception to that rule but even he seems to have lost to the system. “Dhoni is one of the most impressive young men that I have ever worked with. When he came into Indian team, you just knew that he was a leader in the making. He was definitely someone who could take decisions, and he didn’t mind putting his head above the parapet, and didn’t mind putting the bigger players in their place. I think he is the best thing to have happened to Indian cricket in recent times,” he said. Chappell, who was the coach of Indian team for two years from 2005-2007, reckoned that excessive cricket has now started taking a toll on Dhoni. “But looking at him on this tour - I didn’t meet or speak to him at all - but just watching the body language and just watching him on the field, I knew it wasn’t the MS Dhoni.” “I think Indian cricket has worn him down as well. Especially, captaining all three formats, and India plays about 50 percent more cricket than Australia does,” he said. The former Australian captain also said that the Indians appeared dis-interested in Test cricket during the just-concluded disastrous tour Down Under. “It was obvious from the start of the tour that the Indians weren’t really interested in Test cricket,” Chappell said. “After the Australians showed that they were going to be a formidable foe, I was very disappointed with the Indians. Having worked with many of them and having been in the dressing room with them, Test cricket was too hard for most of them. They can only make a lot of money playing 20-over cricket. Fifty-over cricket they can sort of put up with.” “Test cricket for a lot of teams, is pretty tough. And the challenge for Test cricket is, without the sort of grounding that we (Australians) had as kids, Test cricket is too hard.  It’s very demanding mentally, physically and emotionally,” he added. Chappell also felt that Virender Sehwag’s captaincy ambition hurt the team. “Sehwag thought he should be captain after (Anil) Kumble, so there is a bit of a collision there,” he said. “I think Dhoni is getting to a point where Test cricket is getting too hard for him, and the undercurrent around the dressing room cannot help,” Chappell concluded. The former Australian captain was also of the view that Test cricket needed a strong India. “I think Australia and England will always look at Test cricket and try and preserve it. South Africa to a lesser degree. Up until this summer I thought India as well. We probably had four major Test-playing countries, and the others would play Test cricket spasmodically,” Chappell concluded. PTI