Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (37 page)

Not all was lost after one defeat, however, and there was still time to pull things round. We knew we had to win the two remaining group matches and that the run rate might come into the equation. In our second match against Bermuda, we went out and played our shots and won by 257 runs. Thanks to our total of 413, the net run rate had been beefed up and we only had to beat Sri Lanka to progress to the next stage.

We started well against Sri Lanka on 23 March and kept their score to a manageable 254. There’s little doubt that we were capable of chasing down that total, but despite our best efforts things did not go to plan. I got an inside edge to a ball from fast bowler Dilhara Fernando; hearing the ball hitting the stumps in such a crucial match was devastating. When we were all out for 185 the dressing room was in shock and some of the players were in tears. Most were just completely silent. I found it very difficult to get over the disappointment. It was definitely one of the lowest points of my cricket career.

After we returned to India, the media followed me back home and it hurt when I heard my own people doubting the commitment of the players. The media had every right to criticize us for failing, but to say we were not focused on the job was not fair. We had failed to fulfil the expectations of the fans, but that did not mean we should be labelled traitors. At times the reaction was surprisingly hostile and some of the players were worried about their safety.

Headlines like ‘Endulkar’ hurt deeply. After eighteen years in international cricket, it was tough to see things come to this and retirement crossed my mind. My family and friends like Sanjay Nayak did all they could to cheer me up and after a week I decided to do something about it. I started to do some running, to try to sweat the World Cup out of my head.

On top of all this our coach, Greg Chappell, was publicly questioning our commitment and instead of asking us to take fresh guard, was making matters worse. It seems to me that Greg Chappell must take a lot of responsibility for the mess. I don’t think I would be far off the mark if I said that most of us felt that Indian cricket was going nowhere under Chappell.

In my opinion, Indian cricket benefited significantly when the BCCI decided to end Chappell’s tenure in April 2007. Several of our senior players were relieved to see him go, which was hardly surprising because, for reasons hard to comprehend, he had not treated them particularly fairly. His attitude to Sourav, for example, was astonishing. Chappell is on record as saying that he may have got the job because of Sourav but that did not mean he was going to do favours to Sourav for the rest of his life. Frankly, Sourav is one of the best cricketers India has produced and he did not need favours from Chappell to be part of the team.

Chappell seemed intent on dropping all the older players and in the process damaged the harmony of the side. On one occasion, he asked VVS Laxman to consider opening the batting. Laxman politely turned him down, saying he had tried opening in the first half of his career because he was confused, but now he was settled in the middle order and Greg should consider him as a middle-order batsman. Greg’s response stunned us all. He told Laxman he should be careful, because making a comeback at the age of thirty-two might not be easy.

Unlike John Wright and Gary Kirsten, who coached India before and after Greg and made a priority of keeping the players happy, Greg was like a ringmaster who imposed his ideas on the players without showing any signs of being concerned about whether they felt comfortable or not. In fact, I later found out that Greg had spoken to the BCCI about the need to remove the senior players, no doubt hoping to refresh the team.

I also remember that every time India won, Greg could be seen leading the team to the hotel or into the team bus, but every time India lost he would thrust the players in front. In general John and Gary always preferred to stay in the background, but Greg liked to be prominent in the media.

Just months before the World Cup, Chappell had come to see me at home and, to my dismay, suggested that I should take over the captaincy from Rahul Dravid. Anjali, who was sitting with me, was equally shocked to hear him say that ‘together, we could control Indian cricket for years,’ and that he would help me in taking over the reins of the side. I was surprised to hear the coach not showing the slightest amount of respect for the captain, with cricket’s biggest tournament just months away. I rejected his proposition outright. He stayed for a couple of hours, trying to convince me, before finally leaving.

A few days after Greg had come to my house, I suggested to the BCCI that the best option would be to keep Greg back in India and not send him with the team to the World Cup. I also said that we as senior players could take control of the side and keep the team together. That’s not what happened, of course, and the 2007 campaign ended in disaster.

Greg has since written a lot of things about the Indian cricket team. Perhaps it is time to set matters straight. It came to light later that Greg was being filmed for a documentary,
Guru Greg,
during this period which went into a lot of detail about what was happening behind the scenes. It says a great deal about his tenure as coach that I and other players did not even know about this. Why were the players never asked if they felt comfortable with this? I wonder if he had permission from the BCCI to record his documentary. Wasn’t it a clear infringement of the players’ privacy?

While we may never get answers to these questions, suffice to say that Greg’s tenure as coach was the worst of my career. There is no doubt we failed as a collective in 2007, but his high-handed manner added to our disappointment and, in the immediate aftermath of defeat, had a harmful impact on Indian cricket.

The outrage in India after the 2007 World Cup was not helped by armchair experts who were sitting thousands of miles away but still passing judgement on Indian cricket and suggesting I should ‘have a good long look into the mirror’ and think about retiring. Such opinions, which were published in Indian newspapers, provoked fans across the country. I have never quite understood why Ian Chappell, who was merely reporting on the game, should have got a headline in the Indian press. Would any of our former players commenting on Ricky Ponting or Michael Clarke have had a headline in the
Melbourne Age
or the
Sydney Morning Herald
? Chappell would have done better to stick to Australian cricket.

I remember meeting Ian Chappell in Durban in 2010 during the Champions League Twenty20 and having a most interesting discussion with him. I bumped into him as I was coming out of a health club after a session in the gym with my physio, Nitin Patel, who was party to the entire exchange. Ian started the conversation by saying that now he knew the secret behind my scoring big runs. I reminded him that he was conveniently changing his stand, considering what he’d written about mirrors and retirement in 2007. I said to him that I had not done what he suggested back then because I was well aware of what I needed to do and how much cricket I had left in me.

I also said that critics like him change with the wind. When the going is good, they write positive things and when the going gets tough, they start making a lot of negative comments without ever trying to find out what actually is going through a player’s body or mind. He then asked me if I had changed the weight of my bat. I told him that I hadn’t changed a thing and was doing exactly what I had been doing for twenty long years. He was the one who had conveniently changed his opinion because I had been scoring heavily between 2008 and 2010.

Finally the conversation moved to Greg. I told Ian bluntly that Greg had not been popular and I would not want to share a dressing room with him again. Ian attempted to argue that Greg had always had a problem trying to understand failure and had had issues as captain of Australia. I said that that was not my concern and all that mattered to me was that he had failed to take Indian cricket forward. Ian was most surprised to hear all this. In fact, Nitin Patel told me soon after that I was the last person he had expected to lash out like this.

All in all, I was in a bad state after the 2007 World Cup. I was not enjoying my cricket at all and was thinking about retiring – until I received some encouraging words from Viv Richards. Out of the blue, he called me in India from the West Indies and we spoke for about forty-five minutes. He assured me that there was a lot of cricket left in me and insisted that I shouldn’t even think about stopping playing.

Viv was my hero when I was growing up and he will always be a hero, no matter what success I’ve achieved myself. We have got to know each other well over the years and whenever we meet, he treats me like his younger brother and I treat him like my older brother. I’ve always respected him and his views, so when he chose to call me and spend all that time convincing me to carry on, it meant a great deal to me. When I finally got back into some good form and put together a very satisfying century in Sydney at the beginning of 2008, I made a point of calling Viv to thank him for his crucial support.

8th match, Group B. Bangladesh v India at Port-of-Spain. 17 March 2007

India 191 (49.3/50 ov); Bangladesh 192–5 (48.3/50 ov)

Bangladesh won by 5 wickets (with 9 balls remaining)

12th match, Group B. Bermuda v India at Port-of-Spain. 19 March 2007

India 413–5 (50/50 ov); Bermuda 156 (43.1/50 ov)

India won by 257 runs

20th match, Group B. India v Sri Lanka at Port-of-Spain. 23 March 2007

Sri Lanka 254–6 (50/50 ov); India 185 (43.3/50 ov)

Sri Lanka won by 69 runs

Final. Australia v Sri Lanka at Bridgetown. 28 April 2007

Australia 281–4 (38/38 ov); Sri Lanka 215–8 (36/36 ov, target: 269)

Australia won by 53 runs (D/L method)

The process of getting Indian cricket back on track after the World Cup started with a two-Test series in Bangladesh in May 2007, which we won 1–0. Ravi Shastri, who was interim coach, played a key role in helping us put the disappointment of the Caribbean behind us. Personally, it was a welcome change, because Ravi and I have always been very good friends. Not only did we play together in the early years of my career, but even after Ravi’s retirement we spent a reasonable amount of time together on tours when he was commentating. He has an astute cricket brain, and, with his straightforward and transparent attitude, we felt that we finally had a coach we could confide in.

In June we went to Ireland for a limited-overs series against South Africa. I was particularly excited about visiting Ireland because my favourite rock band, U2, come from there. The series posed an unusual challenge for us because it was freezing cold and it took us a while to get used to the conditions. Despite the weather, I had a good outing and twice got out in the nineties in the three-match contest, which we won 2–1.

I also remember the series for an incident with Yuvraj during dinner in Belfast. I suggested to some of my team-mates, including Yuvraj and Zaheer, that we should have some Japanese food one evening and we found a restaurant that served Thai, Chinese and Japanese cuisines. We ordered a number of entrées, including some sushi and sashimi. They served wasabi with the sushi and also gave us some bread rolls to go with the other starters.

I asked Yuvi if he liked wasabi and he swore that he did. To our amazement, he then proceeded to spread the hot wasabi on a roll as if it was butter and was just about to pop it in his mouth when I stopped him. Zaheer was kicking me under the table, telling me to let him eat it, just to see what happened. The wasabi was very strong, though, and there is no doubt that if he had eaten that roll he would have been in serious trouble!

We forced Yuvi to admit that he had never tried wasabi before and we ribbed him mercilessly, though he tried to put on a brave face.

After the Ireland tour we went to England for a series of Tests and ODIs. The first Test started on 19 July 2007 and I have to say we were fortunate to avoid defeat after Michael Vaughan’s England had put themselves in a good position. Anderson and Sidebottom had taken nine wickets between them as we were dismissed for 201 in our first innings, and Kevin Pietersen’s spectacular 134 had helped to set us a target of 380 in our second innings. On the last day of the match we were nine wickets down and struggling when Steve Bucknor ruled Sreesanth not out, even though it appeared that he had been hit right in front of middle stump. The match was stopped shortly afterwards because of rain and it was a lucky escape.

We played much better in the second Test at Nottingham a week later, and on the first day, which was also curtailed because of rain, we took control. We dismissed England for under 200, thanks to excellent bowling from Zaheer Khan and Anil Kumble, with good support from RP Singh and Sreesanth, and followed up with a total of 481. Five out of our top six batsmen passed 50 without going on to make a century. I contributed 91 before being given out lbw by Simon Taufel. He later came to see me to admit that it had been a mistake on his part and that he had seen from replays that the ball was clearly missing the stumps. It added to my respect for Simon and we are still good friends today.

Our innings was tinged with controversy when Zaheer Khan had an unusual welcome to the middle. When he reached the wicket, Zaheer saw several jelly beans sprinkled on the crease. Clearly it was a prank by one of the England players. Zaheer removed the jelly beans but they reappeared as soon as he was back on strike. Zaheer directed a few words at Kevin Pietersen at gully – though it was never clear who was actually involved – and when he came back to the pavilion he was furious. He shouted to the team that we needed to play aggressive cricket and finish England off in the second innings. Zaheer is normally a cool guy and he very rarely gets angry. It was a blessing in disguise for us, as Zaheer backed up his words with one of his best ever spells in Test cricket, taking five wickets and leading us to a famous victory. We went on to win the Test series 1–0 and the recovery that had started in Bangladesh was complete.