Chappell Reprimanded Over Ganguly Comments

India’s cricket board have reprimanded coach Greg Chappell over comments he made about former captain Sourav Ganguly in yesterday’s Guardian.

Chappell told Mike Selvey, the paper’s cricket correspondent, that while Ganguly had helped him secure the coach’s job, he had also clung to the captaincy for financial reasons.

"Much has been written and said, a lot of it misleading, but in essence I told Sourav that if he wanted to save his career he should consider giving up the captaincy," Chappell said.

"He was just hanging in there. Modest innings were draining him. He had no energy to give to the team, which was helping neither him nor us. It was in his own interest to give himself mind space to work on his batting so that it could be resurrected. He was not prepared to do that.

"What I didn’t realize at that stage was how utterly important to his life and finances being captain was."

However, board secretary Niranjah Shah said that Chappell’s comments were unwarranted.

"We have asked him to confine his comments to the team and its performance. We expect there would be no repetition," he told Reuters. "I can’t tell why he should speak anything about Sourav. The thing is already dying, to open it up again was unwanted.

"We will ask Chappell to explain. I think the controversy is unnecessary, especially in the midst of a series."